Nothing
by BravoOscarBravo
Summary: It was the word that ended it all, or rather, the word that started it all: the beginning of a journey through heartbreak, self discovery, and liberation. Based on a secondary character from the Sunstone comic. Originally rated M for subject matter/language, reduced to T at recommendation of a reviewer. A bit angsty to start, but will pull up out of it. Comments appreciated.
1. Chapter 1 - Nothing

_This story is based on characters and situations described in **Sunstone** , created and owned by Stjephan Šejić, alias Shiniez. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is coincidental and unintended._

 _Let's address the elephant in the room at the outset. If you know about **Sunstone** , you know that its story involves sex. While this fan fiction work will mention sex, it will not delve too deeply into any depictions of it. This intends to be a story about people - one person in particular - dealing with motives, intentions, decisions, regrets, aftermaths, epiphanies, and liberation. If you are looking for... something else, this story may not be to your liking._

 _As I read **Sunstone** , one character struck a chord with me: a secondary character essential to the story but largely underdeveloped. This is that character's story, one that gestated and thrashed about in my brain until I had no alternative but to write it down so it could escape and leave me alone. Apologies to Mr. Šejić if this winds up not exactly being canon, but with so much open canvas for this character, it is easy to paint in what you believe fits._

* * *

"Nothing."

Let's start the story there, with the word that began it all. At the time, I would have sworn that it was the word that ended it all. In truth, it was neither and both. It was the end of the beginning.

To be one-hundred percent truthful, it did not start with that word. It started with the knowledge that there was "something". After all the time we had spent together, learning about her and about myself, I knew that there was "something." It was obvious in the way that she did not react to the kiss I gave her on the forehead. It was reinforced by the way that her arm draped across me like dead flesh. It was there even in the dimmest of lights within that room, provided by a streetlamp over a hundred yards down the street from my window, a gray just barely above pitch black that betrayed the disappointment in her opened, weepy eyes that started at some nothingness miles away.

There was definitely more than "nothing" behind that look.

That is why I did not believe her answer.

I loved her. At that specific moment in time, I was not entirely sure of that fact, because "love" in its romantic sense was still something undefined for me although I was searching hard with this woman to find its true meaning. I had felt the familial version of "love" before, that bond that binds child to parent and that at times frustratingly bound siblings to each other in such a way that you could equally wish for their instant death and their continued life simultaneously. I learned respect from my father, a police officer who treated his career as a noble calling instead of a means to a paycheck, but respect was not "love." I tapped my courage and practiced that respect with a sweet girl named Terry in high school and was rewarded with something much stronger than friendship, but by graduation we both agreed that what we experienced was born more of social requirements and hormonal systems turned up to eleven by puberty than anything we were willing to call "love."

I was hoping that I was beginning to finally experience it. I was wishing for it. I was placing my trust in the lessons that I had been taught and in the rituals passed down since humankind walked erect, trying to do everything in the correct, proper way. I knew kindness. I knew concern. I knew friendship. I wanted more. I wanted love. I wanted to be in love with her that night. But because I had never experienced it fully before, I didn't recognize its beginnings.

Now, I recognize them. Yes, I loved her back then.

Would it have mattered if I had known that for sure back then? Let's face it, probably not. Maybe I would have fought harder had I truly known. Then again, maybe by fighting harder I would have destroyed it sooner. That's the problem with life; no Saved Game feature. Perhaps the Almighty can add that in Life 2.0 when He releases it someday?

I gave her the kiss. I felt the weight of her limp arm against my chest. I heard the sniffling intake of air through her nose, and looking down in the eerie gray glow of the streetlamp reflected off of my bedroom room wall into her face, I saw that look, and my blood started turning to ice in my veins.

"Honey, what's wrong?"

I had tried to make it sound gentle and concerned. Constricted by a dry throat and laden with exhaustion, it came out as a grumble from a smoker with a pack-a-day habit.

"Nothing."

The word sounded from her mouth with the whisper of an opened grave. Her arm didn't flex, her eyes didn't move, her head didn't turn to face me.

It was a lie. I knew it, and I was certain that she knew that I knew it.

My heart started pounding harder than it had moments ago when she and I finally and awkwardly surrendered to our animalistic instincts for each other. Barely leashed lust and desire fueled my heart's pace then. Now it was fear - salivating, yellow-fanged, snarling, wolf-snouted fear - driving my heart to the point of cardiac arrest.

 _What have I done to her?!_

We weren't virgins. This wasn't our first time, and it was not our first time with each other. We had enough experience to know that we both enjoyed sex, and we enjoyed it with each other. Or so I thought until that point.

I can recall every detail of it even today. I can tell you that her brow furrows into three folds and her irises grow wide as dimes when she gives that look.

I replayed every aspect that I could remember in my mind with all the grace and insight of a sports post-game show: five second highlight shots interspersed with completely hollow insight. Did I fail to make her climax? Did I ignore her needs? Did I miss some signal for something she wanted me to do? Those were the initial snowballs lodged from on high that started the rumblings of the avalanche that would start consuming my thoughts and fears, and as the avalanche gained momentum, my questions became more terrifying. Am I not "man" enough for her? Was I too forceful? My God, does she think that I _raped_ her?!

I wrapped my arms around her and squeezed her against me, hoping that my action might demonstrate my feelings for her.

She did no reciprocate.

"Come on, Honey. Tell me. What's wrong?"

"Nothing. I'm fine."

I had the borders mostly formed and a few of the interior pieces set in this human puzzle that was named Lisa Williams, enough to know that she could very well be The One if I didn't screw things up. She was fun, quirky in an attractive way, smart, strangely both introspective and outgoing, damned gorgeous, and she had a lip-bite smile that knocked me off my feet. For some reason Fate had smiled kindly upon me one day on campus, bringing us together by seeming random chance. I still had courage back then, so I approached her. Again, Fate favored me, and Lisa liked me. I'll go to my grave swearing that the birds were chirping sweetly in the trees when she accepted my offer to take her out to dinner.

I only needed one date to know that Lisa Williams was everything a guy could ever want and more than any guy could ever hope to handle. We had enough common interests to draw us together and enough differing interests to keep enough mystery between us that the other loved to unravel and solve. By our fifth date, I realized that she could be mine, so long as I took my time and did not force the pieces of the Lisa Williams puzzle to fit where they weren't supposed to go.

But now the puzzle was beginning to fall apart in my hands, and I was afraid that it was because maybe I was trying to force it to be finished too fast.

Yeah. Fate can smile upon you, and then that smile can turn to a carnivore's snarl and its fangs can rip your heart out.

So how did I screw things up? What did I do? What did I not do?

"Nothing."

That's what she kept saying.

But it had to be something. Something I did, or something that I didn't do. It had to be my fault.

No lesson or prior experience prepared me for this. The time-honored rituals suggested in an uncertain way to proceed with caution, so I did. I cradled the egg of her heart in the palm of my hand, too afraid to close my fingers around it and hold it tightly for fear of crushing it, but equally afraid that if my grip were too loose, it would slip from my grasp and shatter as it fell to the ground.

"Nothing."

You would think that, in this still very much male-centered society, it would not be all that impossible to get help. Yes, you would think. And you would be dead wrong.

Friends were no help. Face it: if you can't trust a group of guys whose respect for you depends on the stock of beer in your refrigerator with your e-mail password because of the damage they'd do, you are certainly not going to confide problems in your love life with them. All I would get from them is exaggerated tales of their own exploits, porn magazine advice, and derision. The last thing I needed was a mental chorus of frat boys jeering at me the next time I tried to make love to Lisa. That would ensure failure.

Forget men's magazines, because they're more interested in making money by showing you unrealistic naked women you're never going to be fortunate enough to meet outside of your fantasy world, while pimping over-simplified advice that has no possibility of working in the real world except in a one-night-stand situation. Lisa would think I was either a pig or a loser if I tried any of that advice, and she'd be gone in an instant. Lisa was not going to be a one-night-stand if I had anything to say about it.

Self-help books? Do you want to be the person spotted at the book store checking out the Relationship Self-Help section? I tried to be brave and looked anyway, but it's hard to trust a relationship advice book when the author biography on the jacket touts the woman's two failed marriages as her primary qualification for giving advice and her Masters in Psychology from a university I never of before as her back-up qualification.

Porn? Puh-lease. For starters, no parcel delivery guy I've ever known has made a stop to a home where a woman answers the door in an opened robe and a slutty grin. Second, if you ever try a move on your girl that you first saw in a porn film, your girl's going to decide that you're a pervert and that you need someone else besides her to get your rocks off, or so women always led me to believe. Third, no real woman would endure the degradation that most porn inflicted upon the females in their films. Finally, every porn film I've ever seen has made me feel worse about myself at the end than at the start, because it always makes me feel like I fail to "measure up" the the minimum accepted requirements of real manhood.

Even if I could find a source that I could trust, what would I ask? Can you envision the conversation?

"Yeah, uh, well, you see, my girl and I, we, uh, had sex last night, and, uh, well, it didn't go so well for her, and I need help."

"Did you ask her what the problem was?"

"Yes."

"What did she say?"

"'Nothing'."

"You should have asked her to open up more."

"I did. All she would say is, 'nothing'."

Do you have any idea how enlightening the advice from that conversation would be?

There was only one place to go for help. Only one person among the more than six billion on this planet that I could trust enough to confide this insatiable fear that was slowly eating away at my heart. Only one person who I could trust to sincerely listen and help me discover what I should do. But whenever I asked, she would only say one word.

"Nothing."

I knew it to be a lie. Maybe it was a lie to protect me and my feelings, but it could have been a lie she was making to protect herself. I couldn't know for certain, because she wouldn't tell me. In absence of any evidence to the contrary, I assumed the worst: that whatever it was, I was to blame.

I tried harder. I tried to take things slower. I made sure that I paid attention to her arousal and her pleasure. I made sure she came to climax and wasn't bluffing her way through it for my sake. I was so involved with making sure I was satisfying her that twice I went without climaxing myself. I focused entirely on her and not on myself, trying to be aware of signs or clues but not seeing any. I even tried some Kama Sutra bullshit I found online. I did everything that I could think of to do to erase that look.

Despite every effort of mine, that look would return. To avoid my prying, she tried to hide it from me and slapped on a smile, telling me how wonderful it was, how wonderful I was, how lucky she was. But it wasn't her genuine, gorgeous lip-bite that knocked my feet out from under me when she flashed it. It was a soap opera actress smile stapled on for the close-up shot and discarded once the cameras stopped. In those moments when she thought I wasn't looking or could not see, I noticed that disappointed blank stare return.

"Nothing."

After a while, I made sure that she understood that I knew it to be a lie. I wanted to know the truth. I couldn't fix the problem if I didn't know what the problem was, and I tried to convey that in words that did not shake with the worry that was sinking my heart. She tried to deflect my questions with other phrases besides, "nothing." But I knew these phrases to be empty, women's magazine inspired responses aimed at sparing a man's feelings.

The lie remained, and in time, I exhausted my patience. I stopped trying to find out the truth. The lie eroded the unhardened foundation of my love for her, turning it from cement into quicksand.

It manifested itself in the worst possible of ways: an inability to "perform" for her. The knowledge that there was something wrong with our intimacy evolved into a festering fear that I was not able to please her no matter what I tried. That fear would take root every time, because I knew that in the end, she'd be disappointed with me. I tried to go through the motions, hoping that the spirit of the moment or just the biological reflex of grinding naked bodies together would help me live up to the role I was supposed to play in our relationship. But knowing that she was hiding something from me, I could no longer go through the motions of intercourse with her and "fake it." I know this is going to sound chauvinistic, but men are cursed with the inability to pretend that they've been aroused; they either are or they are not. Lisa could at least channel her inner Sally Albright, and with my lack of experience with women other than Terry, I could be easily convinced by a less than heartfelt performance. But when Junior can't reach full mast, it's obvious to everyone.

This convinced Lisa that I no longer desired her, which was the farthest thing from the truth.

A monster was birthed behind my eyes, one that devoured my despair with relish but found its appetite unsated. That monster was not content with only ruining our sex lives. It decided that it needed to destroy everything we possessed. It rose from the sea in Godzilla mindless fury and obliterated our relationship underfoot. I started assuming that there were other lies, ones to which I had been blind before now. I now translated any hesitant answer, any nervous glance, any minor disagreement into another manifestation of the original lie.

"Nothing."

Suddenly, much sooner than I would have thought, that's what it looked like we had. Two people, clinging to nothing.

Neither of us tried to save its remnants. I felt used, wounded, ignored. What once looked like a possible love destined for marriage and Happily Ever After now was nothing more than a spilled drink to be mopped up with a paper towel and discarded with the same amount of care one would give to tossing that towel in the trash. And forgive me for not being able to see this in a completely objective manner, but the consensus decision that I heard from both her friends and mine was that it had to be all my fault.

I'm sure it was.

We decided to end it, to move on. Ending it was the easy part. Moving on was impossible. I tried. Multiple times. Enough to make me believe my own bad press and decide that my breakup with Lisa must have been my fault, because every attempt I made afterwards also failed miserably.

Shirley had been a classmate at the university in my Engineering courses, and she was continuing on through graduate school. We met again through the college work-study program where I was volunteering as an adviser. She was anime cute, smart, fun-loving, and she didn't seem to have a boyfriend or at least one that I ever noticed before then. We seemed to hit it off decently in our first couple of small dates that were nothing more than meeting for dinner someplace and walking back to her student apartment. She was Friend Zoning me, the zone without any benefits, but I was working on improving that by giving this new relationship all the attention that I had given to the one with Lisa. I really thought that I was making progress, that Shirley was warming to me, and that she was considering making our young relationship a bit more serious.

Just like with Lisa, I was dead wrong.

I abruptly discovered that Shirley was a player in some Fantasy Boyfriend League. Boyfriends were drafted and used until a better option came along. Once that better option appeared, she'd trade in the current boyfriend to acquire the one with the higher BVI: that's Boyfriend Value Index. I had a higher value as an employed architect than the Liberal Arts major she dated the previous semester, who had higher market value than the jock boyfriend from her senior year in high school who didn't get a scholarship offer, who was better than the neighborhood boy she experimented with in her high school sophomore year who was destined for minimum wage labor jobs for the rest of his life. In only two months, I was dumped for some rich kid whose degree had already been purchased with his family's money.

On the Lisa Williams scale of zero to ten, she'd rate about a three, based on looks alone. Hardly a reasonable alternative. To coin a phrase, "nothing."

Strike one for moving on.

Donna was a member of the same health club that Shirley used. I'd hesitate to call them friends but they certainly weren't enemies; perhaps rivals is the best description. Donna supported her gym-rat habit by working at a doughnut shop between the college and my first job, which is where I met her. A brunette with a body that you'd only see on 1990's comic book super-heroines and doe-brown eyes that could entrance men into doing her bidding in a mere glance, she had a sexual appetite that swallowed men whole. Either she guessed or was told that Shirley had dumped me, and she turned on that hypnotic gaze every time I entered the shop. I was in in what you'd politely call a "dry spell" and emotionally bleeding from two break-ups in less than a year, so I fell for that look. I fell hard.

There was nothing that she didn't want to do, no physical part of her that she kept off-limits, and her desires rivaled those of porn actresses. If nothing else, I was able to prove to myself that Junior could still get excited about a woman, that I could make a woman happy, that I could satisfy her sexual desires and have her beg me for more. However, this woman with the body of an Amazon princess had the brain of Kelly Bundy, the heart of Ted Bundy, and the determined clinginess of a venereal disease. It took her half a year to understand that "we're through" meant "never again on God's Green Earth or the Life To Come."

The Lisa Williams scale doesn't have a negative range, so I can't tell you where Donna ends up. Donna has no business being measured on that scale. It would be an insult to Lisa to make such a comparison. Heck, it would be an insult to Shirley. Worse than "nothing."

Strike two for moving on.

A couple of years went by before I met Paula. Paula worked in the Accounting department of the engineering firm that hired me after the first company I worked for went bankrupt in the last Recession. A little older than me, Paula was fighting the slippery, uphill battle that most women find themselves embroiled in today's corporate world. She was fighting it in heels, because Office Casual somehow wasn't applying to women in this firm. We met by accident because we both tried to find the same out-of-the-way corner at a corporate function that all employees were required to attend. All we had in common was the fact that we were lonely, but it was enough of a common ground to give me the courage to reach out to her. She was attractive in an average fashion, but by that time in my life I had convinced myself that I did not even measure up to that. Her intellect was keen, but it was blunted by cynicism born of a painful past and a cut-throat present.

I played this one by the book. I make every effort to take us to the Committed Relationship level, but Paula just pretended. Her parents' ruined marriage and her fiancé's cheating had convinced Paula long ago that she didn't need a man to complete her life, and that sentiment came through loud and clear in the background music of our short-lived relationship. I was simply boredom therapy for her.

None of them were Lisa. None of them were even close.

Strike three for moving on. You're out. A busted draft pick at 28 years old.

I once had a chance at everything, and through my own negligence, incompetence and blindness, I lost it.

"Nothing."

That's all I had.

In between, there were plenty of mistakes, balks, technical fouls, and forfeits. From the smoky temples to the alcohol gods where the desperate and irreparably broken grasp desperately for a lifeline before they drown in their misery, to the sterile confines of the workplace where the distinctions of romance and harassment ominously overlap, to Internet dating sites where trolls with axes to grind lay in wait to ambush the unwary, I ventured. My sense of respect mutated into a fear of the opposite gender. I was no longer walking tall in life as Dad had taught me; I was cowering in the comforting safety of the shadows with the rest of the rodents that feared what the light would expose of me.

I never removed Lisa's cellphone number from my phone, even though I went through four cellphones since our break-up. I'd never been brave enough to try to see if it still worked. I almost caved in one desperate night when my self-loathing would not let me sleep. I yearned to know if she would answer, to hope if there was still just the glimmer of possibility, a last spark of a long-dead fire longing to be set ablaze one last time. I chickened out, afraid that I would instead get the answering machine for a falafel shop in midtown. I kept my number as I moved from phone to phone, just in case she might decide to give our relationship one more try. I tried to keep the last ropes of that dangling bridge between us in place, hoping for a miracle.

But those ropes were finally severed, bringing more sorrow than I ever expected.

Why?

Because I still loved her. Why else would I measure everyone against the Lisa Williams Scale?

And because I learned from a friend of a friend that Lisa had married.

Married.

I accepted that it had to happen eventually. Like I said, Lisa Williams is everything anyone could ever want. Everyone else was sure to see that. Eventually, someone would find her. Someone would love her. Someone would discover the key that opened her heart in the way that I never could, discover what that "nothing" was, and help her overcome it. I accepted it, much in the same way as a cancer victim's family accepts that death is near. It turns out that accepting things doesn't make those things hurt any less when they actually do happen.

I always hoped that the someone who could open her heart and defeat the "nothing" would be me, that someday I'd find my way back to her or she'd find her way back to me, that I could be her hero and banish that "nothing" forever. That hope disappeared forever. Dust. Ashes. "Nothing."

That was enough to hurt, but that wasn't the soul-crushing worst of it.

She had married a woman.

Before you bite my head off and start applying convenient labels to me, let me try to explain something.

I don't have anything against lesbians. You want proof? My cousin Crystal is a lesbian, and I'm the only one in my family that still talks to her after her epiphany. She never struck me as gay when we were growing up. She had her required dose of boyfriends in school and afterwards, enough experience to know for certain that something wasn't clicking into place for her. The, one day, she figured out what the issue was: she was gay.

I never asked Crystal how she came to know this; it was none of my business. However, Crystal decided that someone needed to know, perhaps someone who could plant some seeds of acceptance within the family, and I was the only one she trusted enough to make the attempt. Her sexual orientation was not a decision consciously made in response to an event or a series of events, at least in the way she tried to describe it to me. One day, she simply realized that something wasn't right, that she was simply going through the motions as society demanded. I can't imagine the terror she must have felt in making that first step into the void in front of her, afraid that she was wrong but hoping that she was right and praying that someone would be on the other side of that thin veil that could catch her.

My take on her sexuality? What's the big deal? That's her own business, not mine. What is my business is that I love Crystal like a sister and always will, and she returns that love to me. Crystal found purpose, contentment and fulfillment once she discovered who she truly was, which were things that continued o elude. I am overjoyed for her and I don't care one damn that a woman helped her discover who she truly is.

In truth, I was damned jealous of her.

Crystal's wife Jenni, on the other hand, is not so guarded with her sexual orientation and sees herself as a walking, talking LGBT Public Service Announcement. Unfortunately, Jenni's not a helpful PSA for her cause because she doesn't exactly shatter the long-perpetuated stereotypes. She never bothers to disguise her disdain for men. On those few times that Jenni's deigned to speak to me, she's let me know that her lesbian orientation was influenced in no small part by the men in her life that took advantage of her.

So the question became: was Lisa more like Crystal, or was she more like Jenni?

With no evidence to prevent me from coming to the worst possible conclusion, the worst possible conclusion was the only one I could reach.

Lisa could be more like Jenni, which lead to the follow-up questions: Did something "turn" Lisa gay? Did I do that to her? Was I the last straw? Did I poison her? Does she hate men like Jenni does? Does she hate men because of me?

I hoped that I was mistaken, but I knew that to be the desperate hope of a falling climber trying to flap his arms to learn how to fly before crashing to his death. Maybe her orientation was the "nothing," and maybe she was more afraid to tell that to herself than to tell it to me. Maybe she was scared of telling me because I'd take it more as an accusation of doing something wrong that her realization of something finally being right. Maybe she was dating me only because of society's demands even in this "enlightened" time.

I truly felt that Lisa liked me, that she liked being with me, that she liked sharing her life and her story with me. Maybe I just imagined that. Maybe I saw only what I wanted to see, only what I had been trained to see, and ignored the truth. Maybe I was just being defensive, erecting an intellectual lie to save my dying emotions. Maybe I was polyurethaning one lie over another to hide the scratches and soothe my own feelings. Maybe at my core, I am evil, despite all Dad taught me. Maybe Lisa saw that, and she fled to save herself.

I could never know for sure, because she would never tell me. I asked. Over and over again, I asked.

"Nothing."

What did I do to her? Did I do it to Terry too? Did I do it to the others? Is that why I drive them away? Is that why I couldn't have a lasting relationship, why I could only attract the broken? Did women see right through the respectful façade I've erected around myself and discover the evil lurking in wait within me? Were the only ones willing to take the risk so desperate that they'll take whatever they can, even if it's evil?

Did Lisa ever think about me? Was I a mistake? Was I the root of all evil to her?

I was probably an afterthought, if even that much. Forgotten. More likely, I was consciously amputated from her memory, banished for all time, erased. A mistake from the distant past, one given no more importance than choosing the wrong Chinese take-out place.

In the end, that's all I was. Beaten. Broken.

"Nothing."

Or so I thought at the time, because - as a different writer once penned it - it is always the darkest before the dawn.


	2. Chapter 2 - Stupid Is As

Why the angsty build-up? Because it helps to explain the following conversation between a man and himself. Well, let's reserve judgement on the "man" label for the moment, because I'm just using it to identify the gender of those involved, not the maturity.

The damnable thing about self loathing is that it attacks you at your weakest and doesn't relent until it pulverizes any semblance of self worth within you into dust. Making the revealing of your ex-girlfriend's wedding the perfect instigator, 1:26 in the morning the perfect time, and a cheap studio apartment a block from the elevated subway line with a screaming toddler behind one wall and a bickering couple behind the other the perfect place.

"How's it going, Shit For Brains?" asked the voice-over.

Yep, that's the name it had given me. This was my self-loathing after all. The name I gave to it was My Worst Enemy. It never appeared to me outright, but preferred to speak at me in voice-overs from the safety of the shadows.

"Always said I love this pad."

 _Couldn't afford the other one after the company went bankrupt, remember?_

"Just the kind of place I'd want to bring a girl if I wanted her to think that I was a complete and total loser. Which you are."

 _Oh, go fuck yourself._

"No, that's your job. You toss off. I'm the one who kills the buzz by reminding you it'll never happen in real life. You've got your job, I've got mine. 'Fucking off' is definitely your job."

 _Give it a try yourself, asshole. You might like it._

"Nah, I prefer the real thing: Lisa."

I thought my heart stopped in cardiac arrest as that name resurfaced again.

Lisa was still on my mind. Hell, she was all that was in my mind now, five years after the fact. Her memory was obeying Boyle's Law and pushing out every other conscious thought. She had always been a ghost in the background scenery, always been the standard by which I judged all other women, but her visage was not omnipresent. Learning that she was now married had not only strengthened her ghost, it resurrected her corpse to where it now shambled in zombie fashion about in my brain and sent all other thoughts screaming in fear. It had been impossible to concentrate on work. It had been impossible to ignore her specter through my solitary dinner or through music or Internet browsing or old televised reruns.

"Man, Lisa was the real deal: smart, fun, and damned hot! And you fucked it up! Congratulations, Shit For Brains!"

 _We've covered this like, what? Two million times already? How about something constructive for a change? Like, maybe, some insight into what I did wrong?_

"Hey, I don't make the news, I just report it! Not my fault if it sucks, just like this celibate lifestyle you seem to be content with leading. How can a guy get along with only his right hand for company?"

 _Beats the alternative._

"Huh huh huh! Hey, Beavis! He said, 'beats'!"

 _Shut up._

"Hell, I'm even missing Donna. Now, there was a girl who was into us!"

 _I've met serial killers with a warmer heart than hers, remember?_

"Details, shmetails. At least you wouldn't be a total loser!"

 _True. I'd be wanted in five states and the District of Columbia._

"You're being too damned picky."

 _You know, maybe you'd be much easier to handle if I drank._

"You don't like me when you drink, remember? You lose control of me. The Hulk's got nothing on us when we drink. But gotta admit that smashing shit sounds like fun right about now, especially smashing something over that couple's teeth next door. Why don't they just play Hide The Cannoli and get it over with?"

 _You're so damned smart, you go over and handle it._

"What would our Old Man say about you now, huh? Hiding in this flea-ridden hole straight out of a Charles Bronson movie? Scared of everyone? 'Walk tall in life,' my ass. Damned embarrassment to the family name. He's probably disowned you by now, you fucking coward."

 _You might want to turn that knife you're stabbing me with in the chest counter-clockwise this time. I'm getting used to the clockwise twist._

Someone chose that time to dial my cellphone by mistake. The child behind one wall heard it and cried louder. The couple behind the other wall somehow heard it over their own bitch session and started pounding on the wall with shouted threats of calling the superintendent if I didn't keep it silent on my side of the wall. Although I was wide awake, I had to squint to read the display. It was not a number that I recognized. I answered to someone asking if he could "score a doob." Because my father and his probable opinion of me had been fresh in my mind, I introduced myself using his name and rattled off his badge number. The line went as dead as Tonya Harding's career.

I weighed the phone in my hands for long moments after the call dropped. Desperation drove me to open my contact list.

"What'cha doin', dumbass?"

 _Yeah, go for the jugular with Lisa's old catchphrase..._

I scrolled down through the alphabet in my contact list. Her number was still there.

"Not content with being the city's biggest ass? Trying for the world heavyweight title?"

 _I'm not going to call her._

"Yeah, right. That's why you're looking at her phone number like Gollum looking at the Ring. Because you're not going to call. Bullshit."

 _I can't get her out of my mind. Everything reminds me of her lately. Even you, since you can't stop bringing her damned name up!_

"Stop playing with nuclear waste and put the damned phone down!"

 _Why? Why are you scared about it? What the fuck do you care if I complete my journey into Complete Assdom? Hell, you should be enjoying this!_

"Because this can only end badly, very badly, or Universe Imploding Badly! Because I don't want to end up in a jail cell next to you! Because your ass is my ass, and I don't want Bubba stretching it to fit his purposes, if you get my drift!"

 _God, Lisa, why couldn't you tell me what I did wrong?_

"Man, you're really starting to bore me with this soap-opera of yours. Why don't you do something safer and look for Donna's number in there? That would at least be a real action flick that I could enjoy!"

 _Because I can't endure another six months of trying to end it for the price of a one-night stand. And because she might kill me on sight. And because I deleted her number on purpose just so you wouldn't get your damned hands on my phone and dial it._

"You're not leaving me much of an option outside of Internet porn. Go on; log on and toss off a bit. Might relax me enough to left you off the hook lightly tonight."

I tried to ignore him as I stared longingly at ten digits that I knew by heart, a code that used to be the combination to my happiness and was now the serial number on my Sealed Can Of Heartache.

"I don't fucking believe this! I can't believe you're even thinking about this! Even you can't be this stupid! Put down the damned phone!"

 _One simple call. What could that hurt?_

"You! Me! Her! Me! Especially ME!"

 _But maybe enough time has passed._

"Enough time for what?"

 _Closure... maybe?_

"Closure?! What kind of afternoon-talk-show psychological horseshit is this?! She's married now, idiot! That's about a closed as any door can possibly get! Closed, locked, barred from the inside, Doberman attack dog guarded! Closed! And just to make sure she welded it shut, she's playing for the Other Team now! This is a 'never' as 'never' can get!"

 _I just..._

"Just what?!"

 _I just... have to know... what I did wrong..._

"She never would tell you before when she cared and you tried. What the hell makes you think she's going to tell you now that she's sworn you off forever?! Man, you can be so damned stupid!"

 _Stupid is as stupid does..._

"Look, Forrest. Before you go and unlock the World's Biggest Asshole achievement here, let's take a moment and review all the possible outcomes, shall we? The number's probably wrong; why would she keep the same number since the break-up? Hell, she probably changed it the day after just so you couldn't stalk her by cell tower! You'll probably get the wife of a jealous husband who'll reverse lookup your number and come over here to shoot you in the head!"

 _I'm waiting to hear the drawback to that one. At least something would finally shut you up. Besides, the bullet might go through-and-through into the paper-thin wall and shut up the couple next door as well._

"But let's just supposed for a moment that she's kept the same number for some stupid reason. If the number's right, once she sees the caller ID, what makes you think she's going to pick up and talk to you after you being afraid to use that number all these years? All these years of hoping she's make the first move back because she made the first move away?!"

 _I don't know. Maybe she'd be merciful._

"Okay, let's go with the dumbass fantasy a bit longer. Suppose that she does pick up. What is she going to say at nearly 2:00 in the morning? Probably something like, 'get the hell out of my life and stay out of it before I call the cops and have you arrested for stalking'! How's that for your damned 'closure'?"

 _Like the door on a jail cell._

"Which doesn't suck as bad as the only other possible outcome!"

 _Which is?_

"Open your eyes, asshole! Suppose that, somewhere deep down, she does still have feelings for you. What if calling her awakens them? Are you really such a self-centered, vindictive bastard that you're willing to poison her Happily Ever After with a guilt trip about you just so that someone else can share your agony?!"

 _Damn you, I hate it when you're right._

"Always am."

I put the phone away and laid back on the bed. Lisa and I once made love on that bed. Maybe her scent lingered in it somewhere still?

"Not with all the farting you've done over the past five years."

 _Oh, shut the fuck up and go to sleep!_

He wouldn't, and I didn't, until about two hours before I had to wake up for work.

I resisted the urge that night and the following night. But at 7:42 on the third evening, My Worst Enemy was intrigued enough as to how big of an ass that I could make of myself that he didn't talk me out of the attempt.


	3. Chapter 3 - Stupid Does

"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." So said a wiser person than me. Which could be almost any of the people riding the planet Earth that day when my self-loathing finally decided that it would be more fun to watch me flame out in a blaze of idiocy than to watch me bemoan a lost love for the foreseeable future.

I sat there, weighing my cellphone in my hand for about an hour, trying to convince myself that what I was contemplating was indeed the pinnacle of human stupidity, replacing Getting Involved In A Land War In Asia at the top of the list. I was trying to find a reason not to act on this impulse, a reason not to dredge up bitter memories of me in Lisa's mind. However, the zombie memory of Lisa Williams continued to shamble about in my mind, making it impossible to concentrate on anything. It was starting to affect everything: my concentration; my sleeping; my ability to do my job. I needed to make it stop, if for no other reason so that I could make sure my attention at work was where it needed to be. A wrong decimal point in a building's design specifications will ruin someone's day at some time, and I couldn't imagine telling my boss that I put in wrong data that got someone killed because I couldn't stop thinking about an ex-girlfriend. I couldn't imaging a jury at a personal injury trial buying that as an excuse either.

Part of me hoped that if I simply wished her well when I spoke to her, she might say something pleasant to me, something to help erase that lingering image of that Medusa stare she gave me when she finally walked out on me. The rest of me knew how selfish that was and how unlikely an outcome it was. I was more likely to get a Go Fuck Yourself, a dropped call, and then I'd have not one but two women mad at me: Lisa and whoever Mrs. Williams was.

But I had to make it stop. Lisa was more resilient than I was, or so her ability to admit her orientation and marry someone seemed to hint. She could overcome what I could not. So what if I dredged up bad memories? Maybe it'll finally stop for me. She'd be able to overcome it, especially with the help of someone who loves her. Someone I'm not likely to find. Ever.

 _Yes, God, I know this is stupid! But I don't see any other answer here that doesn't involve alcohol, and You and I both know how that ends._

My thumb was poised over the telephone receiver icon in my contact list for more than three minutes before either my courage or my idiocy overcame my hesitation.

Who am I kidding? It was my idiocy.

I tapped the icon.

It rang.

The fuse on the bomb ignited. _What the hell am I going to say?_

It rang again.

The fuse burned shorter and shorter. _I do have a plan, don't I?_

It rang again.

Only an inch of fuse remained. _Try saying that you're happy for her. That's innocent enough. It's a lie but... no, it's not really a lie... if she's happy..._

Four times, it rang. Sometimes, answering services pick up after four rings.

It did not get to a fifth ring.

The fuse burned to the nub, and I awaited the Earth Shattering Kaboom.

The voice that spoke back was not the controlled, orchestrated voice you'd normally hear on an answering service message.

"Hello?"

The voice was feminine but alto-toned. Even if Lisa had changed a lot since we broke up, her voice could not change that much. Any courage I had suddenly seeped out of my body through the soles of my feet and left ice in its place.

"Uh, hello," I stammered. "I'm sorry, I... I was looking for Lisa Williams."

There was a silent pause. It was about as long a pause as was needed for someone to pull a cellphone away from their ear and check the caller ID.

"Sorry, we don't want any..." started the disinterested reply.

"Can I at least leave a message?" I desperately interrupted.

"What?" came the terse answer.

I chose to expand that reply into, _what is the message?_ instead of, _what, are you out of your fucking mind?_

"Tell her...," I began, and then stopped gracelessly.

Tell her what? What was my great master plan here, outside of making an ass of myself? Correction: bigger ass, biggest ass, the Lord Emperor of All Asses.

I decided that I might as well be as polite as I could be given my current mental and emotional state. I might no longer possess the courage my family tried to instill in me, but I still had respect, or at least its distant red-headed step-cousin: fear.

"Tell her... that David called," I said clumsily, the syllables tumbling out of my mouth as if I were speaking English for the first time in my life. "Tell her... that I heard she's married, and that I wish her all the happiness in the world."

Dead silence responded.

 _God, this is stupid._

The Universe punishes stupidity, and it was conjuring up the appropriate fireball to smite me as I waited on the other side of the cellphone for it. I could practically hear the foreboding change of tone to a minor key in the soundtrack playing through this stupid scene. Any moment now, a death ray was going to beam out of the cellphone touchscreen and incinerate me.

"This is David?" came a hesitant question through the speaker.

"Yes," I confirmed slowly. I might as well state my name for the record in advance of the autopsy. Otherwise, all they'd be able to salvage of my charred remains would be teeth to compare to millions of dental records. I tried to prepare myself for the obliteration that I felt I deserved for initiating this chain reaction of stupidity. The How Dare You Poison Our Relationship accusation. The Who The Hell Do You Think You Are query. The Go Fuck Off And Die closing argument. The Guilty Of Being An Asshole As Charged verdict. The funeral pyre to erase all evidence of my existence.

I was not prepared at all for the actual response.

"David, I'm... I'm Allison," came a few whispered words back through the speaker.

The name meant nothing to me.

"Lisa's... wife," the voice explained softly.

 _Oh, dear God, I really have screwed up now. The wrath that I'm about to receive will be double what I feared, and I can't say that I don't deserve every ounce of this._

"It's nice to talk to you," I offered weekly as an olive branch through the phone call. It was a reflexive reply, the same one I used with Jenni if she picked up when I was calling Crystal.

"David," Allison's voice stammered nervously, "uh, Lisa's a little... tied up now?"

Whoever this Allison was, she was not interpreting me as being the vindictive prick that I worried I was when this call began, and she didn't seem to be unloading a verbal belt of full-metal-jacket bullets at me as she had every right to do. She was being polite, even empathetic. It was much more than I deserved.

I decided to end this very bad idea as gracefully as I could to limit the possible damage not only to myself, but to this woman and to Lisa.

"I'm sorry, Allison?" I asked more than said, afraid that I forgotten her name already. "This... this was a very bad idea on my part... I don't know what I was thinking... this was stupid. Just... just erase the call history so she won't see that I called and let's just forget..."

"Don't hang up!" Allison interrupted in an urgent whisper.

"Huh?" What could she possibly want to say to me?

"David... I think..."

The phone went silent. I pulled the phone away from my ear to make sure the call was still connected, that my thumb hadn't moved on it's own impulse to end this completely embarrassing episode. The call was still connected.

I put the phone timidly back to my ear and waited for Allison's sentence to end.

"I think... I think we should meet."

Oh, dear God, this was rapidly spinning out of control. The ship was no longer responding to helm control, and the crest of the waterfall was approaching fast. As much as I tried to rescue a less-than-disastrous outcome from this foolishness, the Universe seemed determined to toy with me and steer me towards the worst possible of outcomes. Time to jump ship with as much grace as I could muster.

My mouth didn't obey my expressed, explicit orders to keep closed while the minions in my head scurried around for a suitable, polite refusal. What came out was, "I don't know, Allison. That seems like it is all sorts of wrong on so many levels."

"Please," she whispered back. "I... know what Lisa once meant to you."

 _Lisa hadn't forgotten me after all?_

 _Damn it, heart! Start beating again!_

 _As soon as the lungs start breathing again, Chief..._

 _Lisa told her about me?_

What am I thinking; of course Lisa would tell her! If anyone could unlock Lisa's heart to solve the mystery of what the "nothing" was, Lisa would hide nothing else from that person. Lisa married this woman, which implied complete and utter trust in Allison to know her desires, her fears, and her secrets. After all, lesbian marriage is still very new, and not something to enter into unless you completely and honestly trust the other.

Trust.

Trust was now the problem. Although Lisa hadn't trusted me, she obviously trusted this Allison, enough to confide the failure of our relationship with her. Lisa might no longer love me, but I still loved her in spite of everything. Because of that love, I couldn't destroy what she entrusted to her wife's keeping.

"Lisa trusts you, Allison," I answered. "She wouldn't have married you if she didn't. She trusts you to keep her secrets safe and to not hold any secrets from her."

Dead silence replied once again.

"Meeting me? That... that would violate that trust," I finished. I left unsaid the fear born of my own personal experience: violated trusts ruin relationships. Up until five seconds ago, I could not possibly care less for this Allison than any other anonymous person. But Allison's politeness - no, _kindness_ \- changed that. I cared about her, and not simply because Lisa loved her and I still loved Lisa. Because Allison was treating me much better than I deserved. I needed to return that kindness.

I know, I know: then explain why I'm on this damned phone in the first place if I care so damned much? Sometimes, stupidity can't be explained.

"David," Allison said in a slightly stronger whisper, "We need to do this. You see..."

She paused.

I made no answer, and decided to wait for her to finish her own sentence.

"I know that Lisa... wishes... things ended differently between you guys," Allison muttered.

 _She does?! There is a God after all!_

 _Maybe that's all I need to hear?_

"I... I want you two to be friends again," added Allison haltingly.

I could not imagine just being friends with Lisa. How could I look at her and not love her, not desire her, not remember how she looked naked? How could I not try to steal her back from this woman who obviously loved Lisa so much that she was willing to help out her long-departed ex-boyfriend? How could I not ruin everything, again? No, this was a textbook example of a Bad Idea, and I tried to slam on the brakes to stop it.

"Allison, I..."

She interrupted me. "You know the coffee shop on 68th and 5th, near River Music?"

The bow of the ship was now leaning out over the crest of the waterfall. If she was suggesting what I was thinking that she was suggesting, I could not see how this was not all sorts of bad in every way imaginable. But my anxiety had completely eroded my wilting common sense. I even tried to tell myself that I might learn something useful out of all this, like how to be less of an ass in the future. If there was a future.

"I'll find it," I capitulated.

"Tomorrow at 2:00?"

I didn't know if I had a work appointment or not, but my reflexes spoke before I could check. "I'll be there."

"Goodbye."

The line went dead before I could return the goodbye.

At least it was not a soap-opera hang-up. It was polite, even respectful.

Maybe this was not going to be the World's Worst Idea, but at that moment, I wasn't willing to place even a fifty cent bet on that. Instead, I was wondering if my landlord had my next of kin's correct contact information, and how pissy he'd get if I called up to check.


	4. Chapter 4 - Hanlon's Razor

I don't understand the enthusiasm for coffee.

Some people treat it as the paragon of beverages, and they sweat over every detail of what goes into their cup, from the heritage of the beans harvested from some drug-cartel infested land and shipped in some rust-eaten container ship, to the fat content of the creamer, to exactly how many crystals of granulated brown sugar were deposited into the cup emblazoned with whatever social or political slogan was necessary to complete the experience. Funny that they hardly ever concern themselves with the lead content of the municipal water supply in all that calculation.

To me, coffee is a vile conspiracy that society demands I consume every day, a food that has to be sweetened to pass my barely tolerating tongue and lightened so that it doesn't burn a hole in my gullet. More often than not I wind up throwing half the cup away two hours later. I give coffee no more consideration than I give gasoline: go with the cheapest, fill it up, put it on my card.

That approach was not going to cut it at this temple to the pagan caffeine idol. It took me three times as long as any of the customers before me in line to convince the nose-pierced, Centauri Prime haired barista of uncertain gender behind the counter to just give me whatever he or she or it felt like giving me in a cup "to go" after repeated assurances that I didn't care if the beans were grown in Columbia or Kenya or a window-box in Toledo, Ohio.

I also forgot how damned expensive coffee is in this city. Hell, everything's expensive in this city. They'd charge for breathing the air if the could figure out how.

I managed to arrive five minutes earlier than asked. I wanted to arrive fifteen minutes early, but traffic and a substandard taxicab driver with a malfunctioning GPS unit conspired against me. I don't know what I expected to find on my arrival, or how I intended to pass the time until this Allison arrived. Sadly, this wasn't a computer game, and the player character names were not being displayed above everyone's heads for me to figure out which one was Allison. None of the creatures that I could readily identify as women seemed to be there alone, and given that none of the women who were speaking to partners looked as I imagined Lisa to look after five years, I deduced that this Allison had yet to arrive.

Ten minutes after that, I was forcing myself to stay alone at my table with my overpriced version of caffeinated jet fuel, telling myself that traffic in this city was a bitch, that there was more than one idiot cab driver in this city, and that Allison was simply late and not playing me for a fool. I tried really hard not to stare at the door like a lovelorn man waiting for his blind date to arrive, which meant that I was instead glaring at my cup of coffee and wondering if a stray spark might set its contents on fire.

On top of that, my self-loathing was sitting in the seat across from me and finding itself endlessly amused at this predicament of my own making. I was trying really hard to ignore its gleeful cackling, which only increased my dedicated focus on my coffee.

All of that is why I didn't see her until she was standing almost next to my shoulder.

"Excuse me, are you David?"

I am surprised that I did not kick over the table or hit the ceiling thanks to the sudden wave of fright that shot through my veins. I'm also surprised that I didn't soil my shorts.

A woman stood there: a thin, tall, fair-skinned, striking brunette with a birthmark near her lip Cindy Crawford style, wearing hipster glasses, a severe but attractive hairstyle, and a cranberry-and-black skirted business suit that radiated power and command, carrying a disposable coffee cup in her left hand.

There was a golden ring on the fourth finger of that hand, right where a wedding band should be.

My self loathing gave me a virtual dope slap and reminded me that gentlemen rise when a woman approaches, regardless of her orientation. I tried not to jump to my feet as I stood. Clumsily, I extended my hand.

"You must be Allison?"

She smiled.

It was her smile. Lisa's smile. I would recognize that lower-lip bite anywhere.

That hole in my stomach that the coffee started? It was now a sinkhole larger than half of Florida. For that brief instant, I could not help but be insanely jealous.

 _That had been my smile! It's been stolen from me!_

I regained my composure quickly, or at least I think I did, but I could not push down the bile rising in my throat. I tried to tell myself that it was never my smile; it was Lisa's smile, and she was free to give it to whomever she chose. Why not the person she trusted most in all the world? It did not make it any easier for me to accept that another thing that had once been mine now belonged to someone else. It didn't make it any easier to control the rage, but control it I did.

Allison took my hand and gave it a single shake.

"Pleasure to meet you," she said.

That's what her voice said, but her body told a completely different story. The handshake grip was as nervous as mine was. The clothes tried to project confidence, but the eyes and the grip did not reflect that. I held her hand for a moment longer, feeling the sweat and temperature in it.

She was nervous. More than nervous. She was frightened of me.

 _How could she possibly be more nervous than I am about this?_

Perhaps I accepted Allison's invitation because I secretly hoped to find some reason to hate her. I wanted her to be "butch", ugly, man-hating, agenda-spewing, ignorant: like Jenni. It would give me the appropriate sacrifice for my self hatred to find that Lisa's beloved was inferior to me. But holding her hand and seeing the fear and worry in her eyes, and seeing her wearing Lisa's nervous smile, I came to a much different conclusion. This woman was no caricature, no stereotype, no villain.

She was genuine.

And she was afraid of me.

I couldn't hate this woman if I tried. Not because she was scared, but because she was genuine. And damn it, because Lisa loved her. That made her worth something to me. At that moment, it made her worth more than myself to me, given the shameful motivations in my heart. I shoved my rage back into its cell and slammed the door on it hard.

"The pleasure's all mine, Allison," I tried to say gently. I released her hand and gestured to the seat across from me at the small table. The place was a bit too cramped for me to move around and slide the chair out for her, but I wondered if she might not see such a gesture as condescension instead of politeness; Jenni always saw gentlemanly gestures as demeaning. I was not very good with humor, but I decided to try with an icebreaker.

"I'll give you a moment to pull out your cellphone camera and take a picture for the police in case you need to report me later," I joked.

"You're not the stalker type," Allison said through a slanted smile.

"Willing to bet your life on it?" I asked.

"Lisa never would have gone for the clingy, stalker type."

I felt the blood rush from my face. I knew her name would come up. I thought I was prepared to hear it. I was dead wrong.

"I'm sorry," Allison apologized, obviously sensing my reaction and the reason for it. "That was... I'm... not sure what the heck I'm doing here. This is world-boss-level awkward."

"I almost didn't show," I said, agreeing with her sentiment. "Too damned scared of what you'd think I was really trying to do with that phone call. Too damned afraid that you'd have the cops waiting here."

"Me too," she whispered, looking down at her own coffee cup. "I was afraid you'd go all Jealous Boyfriend on me."

"I was tempted," I admitted, lowering my eyes to my own coffee cup in shame. "Until..."

"'Until', what?" Allison asked.

"Until... until I saw her smile on your face?" I replied, my voice shaking with the sad memory of lost love. "She only used that smile when she was really happy or really nervous. Seeing that... I can't hate anyone wearing that smile."

The smile returned, accompanied by a blush of embarrassment.

I smiled back. "See?"

She chuckled awkwardly.

I extended my hand again. "Truce?"

She reciprocated instantly. Her hand was still shaking and uncertain, but she took mine. "Truce."

I pointed to her coffee cup. "You should have come to me first. I'd have bought you one."

Allison smirked. "I'm sure you mortgaged your house to buy your own," she said, gesturing to the cup in my grip.

"Don't have a house. Had to add it to the student loan debt instead."

Allison cradled her coffee mug for a few moments. I recognized the gesture as part of the ritual for beginning the Small Talk, because I practiced it sometimes myself. I need to practice it more, because I suck at it.

"I should have guessed that the guy Lisa fell for was handsome," she offered, continuing her efforts to be polite towards me.

I appreciated the effort but considered it unnecessary. I was the idiot who conjured this awkward situation. It was not Allison's job to diffuse it; it was mine.

"You need to get your lens prescription rechecked," I joked weakly as I searched my brain for some appropriate compliment that a hypothetical lesbian would not find awkward, uninformed, or just plain insulting. I always choked when trying to come up with one for Crystal or Jenni, and right then, I was vapor-locking for something to say.

With fear and trepidation, I offered, "I have to admit, you're not what I expected."

Her smile crumbled, her lips drew into a thin line, and her eyes narrowed into lethal slits. "Meaning?"

My self hatred whispered _Nice Going Shit For Brains_ into my ear. My previous line in this script definitely needed a rewrite before the next take. Unfortunately, this was a live broadcast and I had to work in an improvised apology to soften what had sounded harsh and judgmental. I sighed to try and relieve the pressure. It didn't work. I decided to try and let her know that I was not completely inexperienced with lesbian women. Smooth? Hardly. Inexperienced? No.

"Meaning, you're not the least bit like my cousin's wife."

Confusion softened Allison's angered glare but did not erase it.

"Sorry," I replied. "Lisa never knew about Crystal. In fact, I don't think Crystal - she's my cousin," I explained briefly, then continued. "I don't think Crystal 'came out' until after we broke up. Her wife is still perpetuating the 1980's lesbian stereotype. She thinks her orientation gives her a license to hate men."

Allison relaxed, thinking that she understood. Maybe she did, maybe more so than I understood.

"I don't hate you, David," she whispered.

"I don't hate you either, Allison," I admitted. "And even if I did, you don't deserve it. And I certainly can't hate Lisa. I... I can only hate myself."

Her eyes softened. "Don't do that."

Those three little words cracked the dam holding back my frustration and self hatred, and all of it began leaking out. It took all of my composure to control the flood so that Allison would not be swept up in its rage and pulverized.

"Too damned late," I said in soft tones that were tinged with bitterness despite my best effort. "I ruined it. She was the best thing I ever had and I ruined it. I ruined it by either pushing too hard or not pushing hard enough. I ruined it by letting her go like she wanted and not following after her like I should have. Whatever it was that I was supposed to do or not do, I didn't do it, and I ruined everything.

"She's obviously happy now," I continued, "and I'm glad for her. You're happy now, and I'm glad for you. And I'm honestly happy that she finally knows who and what she is." I raised both hands in a weak gesture of surrender. "Everyone gets to be happy now except stupid-ass David." Realizing that I had now etched the image of the Lord High Emperor Of Conceited Bastards in Allison's brain next to the entry for my name, I added, "who's such a stupid ass that he's dumping on his ex-girlfriend's incredibly kind and generous wife because he's too much of an ass to keep his damned mouth shut." I lifted the scalding jet fuel to my lips and sipped. "Hooray for me."

I didn't expect Allison to have an answer, and she did not for a few seconds. After an awkward silence, she said, "sorry for asking bluntly, but are you sober?"

"As a judge," I replied. "Alcohol and I don't get along. Bad things happen when we get together. Nuclear fallout level bad things."

I felt her finger touch the hand that I was using to grip my coffee cup. Its touch was slow and timid, completely contrasting with the power and confidence that her wardrobe attempted to convey. In reflex, I looked up and saw her eyes looking at me.

There was no judgement in those eyes. All I could see within them were concern, the same concern a rescuer would have for a dying victim.

It suddenly became so clear to me how Lisa could love this woman. It became clear to me how anyone could love this woman.

"David, it's not my place to tell you Lisa's secrets," she started.

"I don't want you to," I interrupted. "I don't want to poison what you two have like I poisoned her."

"You didn't 'poison' her," Allison stressed in a low, hushed voice.

I cocked my head slightly in confusion. Yes, my folks owned a Golden Retriever when I was a kid, and I learned some of my best facial expressions from old Farley.

"I can tell you this. You didn't do anything wrong."

I shook my head in disbelief. "If I did nothing wrong, then how did it all fall apart?"

Allison's eyes softened and then slammed shut. In the instant before she tried to hide them, I saw evidence of some old, secret pain whose source I could not guess rising within them. She wasn't supposed to show me that, but she had not been quick enough to prevent it.

"It takes two to hold a relationship together, David. Lisa said you were an architect. Can a bridge hold itself up if you take away one of its anchors?"

"People are not bridges," I muttered, avoiding her question.

"But one person can't do a two-person job," Allison gently insisted. "You can struggle all you want to save something and it'll fall apart if the other person doesn't think it's worth saving."

"Is that what she thought? Is that what I made her think?" I asked before I caught myself. I then blinked and started waving my hands in front of me in a vain attempt to erase those words from the air before Allison cold hear them. "Sorry, forget that. Stupid Man falling into the Stupid Man Stereotype again."

"I can't tell you what she kept from you," Allison repeated. "But I can tell you that she was afraid that if she mentioned it, it would be like saying Voldemort's name aloud. It would destroy you guys."

"Yeah, and not saying his name aloud turned out so much better?" I icily replied.

Silence crashed down on our table like dried, cracked ceiling plaster loosened by an old woman falling out of bed in the upstairs apartment.

"I'm sympathetic to what you went through," Allison said after an awkward moment. "If you think you can screw up, you should take a look at my life. Hell, I almost lost Lisa because I was too damned afraid to admit what I felt for her." After a pause, she added. "It's a bit hard for a woman who's not very sure of her own orientation to admit to another woman who's also not so sure that she loves her."

I accepted her trepidation and her honesty. "Yeah. And here I thought that us males had it hard. Wrong again, as usual. At least us guys have a guidebook to follow... someplace... sort of lost my copy..."

"Grass always looks greener," she agreed. "I never understood what you men go through until I tried to do it myself."

Another awkward silence intruded into our discussion. This time, I decided to break it.

"I'm serious when I say that I wish you both every happiness in the world," I offered.

Allison smiled gently but didn't look at me directly. After a moment, she replied, "you seem like a nice guy..."

"I wish to God you didn't say that," I groaned. "You know the old cliché of Nice Guys and where they end up? I'm not exactly shattering the stereotype here."

Her smile turned sad. "Not all Nice Guys finish last. For a time, yeah, sometimes they do. My best friend in the whole world is a Nice Guy, but he's a bit on the fringe, which makes it much harder for anyone besides me to see him that way. His luck with women was so bad that he was all set to spend the rest of his life in last place with the rest of the Nice Guys. But he screwed up his courage one last time and tried again, and now he's about to marry one of the most 'real' people I've ever known.

"There are plenty of people out there looking for Nice Guys, David," she tried to assure me. "Real people, not wackos. But they can't find them because the Nice Guys aren't helping their cause and hiding in their bedrooms every night because they're afraid of finishing last again. You've got to move on."

Unfortunately for Allison, this was all advice that the Person Who Hates Me The Most has already spewed at me a thousand times or more. Apparently, I needed instructions more than I needed advice, and no one had the instruction sheet for Moving On. At least, no one was willing to let me see their copy.

"Tried," I sheepishly admitted. "Failed miserably. If you need proof, I can provide names, dates, and telephone numbers. Might even be a police report if I look hard enough."

Allison obviously didn't believe me. "Come on. A handsome guy like you?"

"None of them were Lisa," I said simply and softly. "Not even close."

Allison fell silent.

"You said that you almost lost her," I reminded her. "What if you did? How good do you think you'd be at the 'moving on' thing?"

I regretted those words the instant that I uttered them, because a tidal wave of pain rose in the windows of her eyes.

"Defense rests, Your Honor," I said meekly, taking another sip of the vile black stuff in my coffee cup. In that instant, my vindictive nature was made plain to me and I hated myself for it. "Sorry, that was unkindly cruel. I apologize. Feel free to slap me in the face and storm out; I deserve it." I slid my coffee cup over to her side of the table. "Better yet, fling this in my face. Damned stuff is corroding my stomach, might as well burn my face off as well."

"But you're right," she admitted in a small voice that was shaking with the stress of forcing itself to be gentle and calm.

"But I'm also an ass," I said, trying to continue the apology. "You've been nothing but kind to me, and I repay it by being bitter towards you. You deserve better than that. I'm an ass and I'm sorry."

"You're hurt," Allison replied. "Sometimes, it's hard to not be an ass when you're hurting. I know, I was the world's biggest ass when I was hurting."

"I think you'd better check the standings again," I tried to joke. "I think you'll find that I've been ranked the World's Greatest Ass for five years running."

"Well, I gave you a run for your money a couple of years ago."

"Never saw you in my rear-view mirror," I said, taking back my cup of the black jet fuel and forcing down another sip.

Cue the silence once again. I tried to use that moment to compose my thoughts, but Allison broke the silence first.

"I won't hide it from her that you and I talked," Allison said.

"Don't ever hide anything from her," I replied in gentle seriousness. "We hid things from each other, and it evolved into a monster that ate us whole."

"Maybe in time, I can... convince her to talk to you?"

I almost broke into tears with the suggestion. It's what my heart yearned for, but my brain had a firmer grip on reality at that moment. "It'd only poison what you two have. Some old ghosts should stay buried."

"But please, David, don't hate yourself over this?" Allison pleaded gently. "It wasn't your fault."

I disagreed, but I did not vocalize my opinion this time. I simply closed my eyes and swallowed, trying to get the brick that had formed in my throat to go back down into my stomach and fight it out with the bile and caffeine churning down there.

"If you have to hate someone, hate me," she offered.

I smiled at the magnanimous gesture, but even of I weren't trying very hard to be a polite gentleman, I could never accept such an offer. No one should take bullets for me. No one should serve time for my crimes.

"Hate the woman who finally made Lisa whole?" I asked. "How could I possibly do that?"

She blushed again and tried to do her best turtle imitation by pulling her head towards her shoulders.

"Allison," I began in as gentle a voice as I could manufacture. "I know that I've only just met you, but I can already tell why Lisa fell in love with you. You're 'real'. Lisa liked 'real', she respected 'real'. You're sympathetic. You're kind. Being here with me proves that more than words can say. If you weren't married, weren't gay, weren't completely out of my league, and you were so blind that you couldn't see my faults, I could fall for you just like she did."

Allison's lips gave an embarrassed smile. "I don't see any faults."

"Like I said, you'd better recheck your lens prescription," I joked. I then became serious again. "I like you, Allison, and I'd like to think that I can now call you a friend. I'd love to be able to call Lisa's wife my friend. I'm glad we met. But... anything beyond this one meeting is playing a very dangerous game with your marriage. Because damn it, I still love Lisa too damned much, and I can't guarantee you that I can control that, that I wouldn't try to sabotage what you've got. I already ruined one relationship of hers, I'm not going to ruin another."

"You're not giving yourself much credit here."

"Not sure I've earned it," I countered.

Allison looked uneasily down to her coffee cup, struggling for some polite reply.

"Just... just know that I am happy for you both. Happy that she's figured out who she is and that you've found each other. You both deserve every happiness." I finished.

"I'd like for her to be able to say the same thing someday about you," she replied softly. "Give her that chance?"

There was that advice again. Move On. Two syllables that were so damned easy to say yet so damned difficult to do. How does one Move On from perfection?

"Someday, maybe," I sheepishly answered. "Who knows? Miracles happen every day."

"Only if we help make them happen," Allison corrected me.

"Yeah," I muttered. "Still working on that. Guess I missed that class in college."

Again the awkward silence descended upon us. It was interrupted by an electronic chirp.

Allison gave an embarrassed smile. "Reminder of a meeting I have with my employer." She rose. "Gotta go."

"Of course," I said, choosing to believe her. A quick glance at my watch showed it was half past the hour, not an unreasonable time for someone's reminder alarm to go off. I rose and extended my hand again. "It was a pleasure meeting you, Allison."

This time, her hand was confident when it grasped mine. "The pleasure was all mine, David."

I watched her leave. She gave me a glance over her shoulder and a parting smile before the door closed behind her.

Yes, Lisa could love that woman. Anyone could love that woman. In a different reality where I still had a fraction of courage? I could love that woman.

How could I hate her? I couldn't. And I certainly couldn't hate Lisa.

So, despite what Allison said, I wound up right back where I started, hating the only person left in the whole sad story: myself. Deciding that I was weary of that, I chose to hate the coffee instead. I headed towards the coffee shop door, tossed the half-full cup into the trash to the audible distress of the hired help, and let myself out.


	5. Chapter 5 - Perseverance

_Miracles happen every day..._

 _...Only if we help make them happen..._

Every time my left foot struck the sidewalk, I would hear my own words in my head: _Miracles happen every day_.

With every right footstep, Allison's words would echo in response: _Only if we make them happen_.

Her advice was not exactly new to me. I had tried to take and implement that advice before, failing each time. It wasn't the advice that was the problem; it was the idiot at the controls who was trying to use it.

 _Miracles happen every day..._

 _...Only if we help make them happen..._

The rondo was swirling about my brain so much that I arrived back at the firm on autopilot. An elevator was available and I opted out from taking six flights of stairs; the motivation just wasn't there today. Stepping inside the box, I pressed the button for the Drafting department and the doors slid closed.

The doors opened after a moment and I didn't recognize the scene at first. I then realized that the previous occupants of the elevator must have hit the wrong button, and I was now waiting patiently on the floor for the Accounting department for the elevator to resume its rise. I instinctively reached for the Door Close button.

 _Miracles happen every day..._

 _...Only if we help make them happen..._

Maybe I should make an effort to make that miracle happen?

Instead of closing the doors, I decided to step out of the elevator and walk over to the Office Administrator cluster.

The cluster of three desks was currently staffed by one woman. At first glance, she appeared to be about my age, give or take a couple of years, of medium height and medium build, dressed in higher-end Office Casual. She also wore the soured expression of someone wresting with uncooperative computer software as she glared at the terminal before her. Sensing my approach as only a veteran of such a career can do without diverting any attention from her primary task, she asked in my direction as I approached, "Can I help you?"

"Maybe," I stammered. "I was looking for Paula?"

"Paula will be back in a minute," the woman answered in a professional but curt tone, still not looking at me.

My courage was evaporating quickly under this woman's curt business-only demeanor and I was already looking for an escape route.

Coincidentally, the second of the two elevator doors behind me dinged to announce its arrival on the floor. I heard the doors slide open.

"David?"

I recognized the voice. I screwed a smile on my face and turned to face her.

"Hi, Paula."

Paula appeared confused by my presence in her department's lobby. "What brings you down to Accounting?"

"Nothing work related," I admitted. "I was just wondering if I could talk to you for a second."

Paula made no reply. I could not tell if it was an invitation to continue explaining myself or a signal to stop and leave.

 _Miracles happen every day..._

 _...Only if we help make them happen..._

I chose to interpret her hesitation as a signal to continue.

"About whether you have any plans for this evening," I offered.

Paula's shoulders slumped, and with that gesture, so did my emotions.

 _So much for helping make miracles happen, Allison._

"I'm sorry, David," Paula said in a soft voice that sounded like it was making efforts to be gentle for my sake. "I'm... seeing someone..."

My self-hatred roared in villainous laughter in my head. Apparently, the sense that I was getting that Paula did not need a man in her life were just a touch incorrect. That man just didn't happen to look like me. Again.

My disappointment must have been obvious, because Paula added another, much weaker, "I'm sorry," before slowly stepping past me and into the office. I made no move at all and simply stood there blocking the approach to the main desk.

I heard the professional voice behind me, but it was much gentler this time. "Are you okay?"

No, but I wasn't about to unload on a total stranger who probably had to work with Paula day in and day out. Instead I shrugged and turned towards the voice. The office administrator was now looking at me from her chair with what appeared to be genuine concern.

"I guess, but my batting average is pitiful," I joked dejectedly. "Pretty soon they'll be sending me to the minors for a rehab assignment."

The woman blinked twice, obviously not comprehending my reference.

I shrugged again and stapled a polite smile to my face. "I guess you're not a baseball fan?"

She gave me an embarrassed smile. "Sorry. All I know about sports is that my father used to scream at the television so much when they were on that we had to buy him a portable TV for him to use in the basement."

I chuckled politely and took a step closer to the desk to get out of the way of incoming traffic more than any other reason. "If he was a fan of the local teams, that's understandable. Lots to yell at the TV about with those guys."

The woman paused, and I could see her wrestling with an unspoken question. After a second, she blurted out, "are you that David guy in Drafting?"

My smile wilted under the weight of uncertainty, wondering if my name being circulated on the office's Men To Avoid Like The Plague List.

"Depends on whether that means I'm guilty of something or not," I answered.

Her eyes narrowed. "Only of being used," she grumbled, and turned her attention back to her terminal screen. "Consider yourself lucky that she was only using you for boredom therapy."

It was a sentence that was obviously meant to be consoling, but instead it stoked both my curiosity and my anger. I took another step closer to the desk. "So, the Rumor Mill says I'm now the Office Boredom Therapy Guy?"

"No!" she said in a voice just slightly too loud for the polite tone mandated by the Employee Handbook. She recoiled slightly in apparent shame at making that insinuation. "Although she was hinting to some in the office that there was this cute guy named David in Drafting who was good for an evening out."

She was trying to fill in the hole but was instead digging it deeper. However, I gave her the benefit of the doubt, deciding that she was being intentionally honest and unintentionally insulting, not the other way around.

"Well, glad I'm at least good for something," I muttered. I then looked more directly at her, and in my barely tethered frustration asked sarcastically, "you wouldn't care to find out for yourself, would you?"

She shrunk back, looking offended, and turned her attention back to her terminal again. "Not sure I'm your type."

In my frustration, I interpreted her reaction as a further insult. "And what is my 'type'?" I asked in genuine curiosity and controlled anger, wondering what the Rumor Mill or my body language was saying about me.

"Pretty," she spat, not bothering to look back at me.

I could not have been struck more dumbfounded if someone hit me over the head with a telephone pole.

Is that how I made this woman feel? I made her feel ugly?!

 _Nice Going, Shit For Brains._

I knew that no matter how I attempted to respond, I was not going to erase that impression. I did my best to apologize with a gently spoken, "I'm sorry that I made you feel that way," before excusing myself and heading towards the stairs so that my evil aura would not pulsate in her presence while the elevator took half a year to arrive. I returned to my cubicle, logged back into the office system, and stared at the office logo on the screen saver for what seemed like hours as I contemplated my recent streak of accidental yet abysmal failure and debated whether this was to be a permanent situation that I simply had to accept.

This day began with someone's hand on the lever of the toilet, and my heart was now swirling counter-clockwise in the whirlpool and heading down to the sewer. I had survived the encounter with Lisa's wife unscathed, which was the best of all possible outcomes from that idiocy, but I was paying for that blatant tempting of fate now. Somehow, either through the rumblings of the Rumor Mill or in the way I spoke or looked at that woman downstairs, I had made her feel small and unworthy in my sight. I accepted that I was a man and therefore a pig, but I had hoped that I was at least presenting myself as a civilized pig instead of a caricature of all that was evil in the Male Stereotype. I guess I was not?

Bitterly, I had to admit to myself that I had unconsciously measured the woman on the Lisa Williams Scale and rated her about a two, and that was only because of the concern that she showed me. She was no looker and I felt no animal attraction towards her. But was I really that petty? Were looks all I cared about? I had hoped that Lisa and Shirley and perhaps even Paula had the slightest interest in me beyond my looks. Was I so hypocritical that I was not giving any woman the same benefit of the doubt that I wanted?

 _Guilty as charged, Shit For Brains._

I decided that I deserved the woman's scorn downstairs, and that I didn't deserve Allison's kindness. I was shallow and evil, and Lisa had discovered that in time to save herself. Lucky her.

A chime sounded from my terminal. I glanced up and saw a message on our inter-office instant messaging system.

 _dbarnes : Are you the David in Drafting that was in the Accounting office earlier today?_

I sadly closed my eyes, certain that Human Resources had gotten wind of that episode and was looking to deliver the warrant for my office arrest. Resigning myself to fate, I responded.

 _davidg : Yes_

Minutes passed with me waiting in foreboding gloom before another message appeared.

 _dbarnes : I'm sorry for what I said_

That sound you're hearing in the background is the sound of a stylus being scratched across an LP. Yes, I know vinyl's back, much to the confusion of my parents who were so happy to replace their gouged record collection with something that sounded better and took up less space in the closet. I was too stunned to respond to that six-word message for almost a minute, until my better sense realized that this "dbarnes" was probably the office administrator down in the Accounting department. She was likely sitting on the other side of this channel and becoming more afraid of my response the longer I was taking to make it. Hurriedly, I typed back.

 _davidg : apology unnecessary, i'm sorry I made you feel that way_

 _dbarnes : You didnt_

 _davidg : I must have if that's what you thought_

Messages started flowing more freely between us after that.

 _dbarnes : I over reacted. Im sorry_

 _davidg : Don't be, I should be apologizing to you. I probably would have thought the same thing in your place, the way I acted_

 _dbarnes : Well, if I was just told that I was boredom therapy, i'd be mad too_

 _davidg : You didn't start that_

 _dbarnes : But I shoouldnt have said that_

The messages were coming so freely now that I was not putting any thought into either my spelling or my responses, and I transmitted a little too much truth before I realized it.

 _davidg : I'd rather know what people think about me, secrets killed my last relationship :'(_

Oh, you stupid, stupid fool! Why the hell did you send that?! She's going to see that as a ticking time bomb at best, an accusation at worst!

 _dbarnes : yeah they do that. sorry to hear that. you okay now?_

Take your time with this response, I ordered myself. Trouble was, I could not construct a response that didn't sound lame. Why hadn't any of Lisa's creative writing skills rubbed off onto me? Probably for the same reason my math skills never rubbed off on her checkbook ledger. Finally, I settled on something.

 _davidg : getting by with a little help from my friends_

 _dbarnes : me too_

That response was a clear invitation, begging me to make further inquiries. That was not something I was willing to do over an instant messaging system on which the management could eavesdrop.

An idea began to form, born of the shame of my earlier actions, the responsibility to make adequate apology, the loneliness of my existence, and the need to put the shambling zombie of Lisa's memory to rest somehow and banish her ghost into the background once again. A whisper in my brain added that beggars could not be choosers; it was the echo of that evil side of me that I had just discovered, the one that viewed looks first and everything else second. Ms. Barnes had reached the same diagnosis herself in the mere sixty seconds I was in her presence earlier. That evil within me not only shamed me, it inspired me to tackle it head-on. My fingers began typing again.

 _davidg : I still want to apologize properly. Would you like to go someplace after work? You pick the place, it's on me._

Two minutes expired before the fear that I had misunderstood Ms. Barnes and pushed things way to far began to consume me. However, the words were sent, and I could no more erase them than I could erase my other past failures. Finally, a chime sounded to announce her reply.

 _dbarnes : That's okay._

She was offering a polite refusal, but I wondered if it was not meant as a test to see how sincere I was with the offer. I decided to make myself sincere so that I could prove to myself that I was better than my personal demons.

 _davidg : I insist. Please?_

Another long, nerve-wracking delay intervened before her response showed up.

 _dbarnes : Cant tonight :-( tomorrow?_

I replied so hurriedly that I misspelled the word.

 _davidg : absulutly :-D_

 _dbarnes : I'll go easy on your credit card ;-)_

 _davidg : don't you dare! it's my apology, it'd better be the one you want_

 _dbarnes : i'm easy to impress_

 _davidg : thank God for that, because I'm an idiot! ;-)_

 _dbarnes : you didn't look like one to me_

A warmth began to glow in my chest as I read and reread that last response. It then occurred to me that I did not have one essential piece of information that was necessary before asking someone out on a date.

 _davidg : BTW Ms Barnes? What's your name?_

 _dbarnes : Diana_

I smiled. The name sounded beautiful in my mind for some reason, striking a resonating note.

 _davidg : Pleasure to meet you, Diana. I'll see you tomorrow?_

 _dbarnes : That would be nice :-)_

 _davidg : Sorry, but boss is heading this way, gotta get back to work :-(. Bye!_

 _dbarnes : Me too. ttfn._

I closed the messaging window before the event I described in my last message really did come to pass. In its place, I launched the CAD application with my current work. Words began echoing in my mind again that had resounded there earlier today, but now they sounded less lecturing and less ominous.

 _Miracles happen every day..._

 _...Only if we help make them happen..._

Who knows?


	6. Chapter 6 - Barnes and Noble

I woke the next day with minimal expectations for the evening. It was an emotional defense mechanism I had developed after being dumped by Shirley after Lisa: don't expect too much, so you won't be hurt as much when it ends. It was hard not to think to myself that Ms. Barnes had accepted my invitation out of a combination of guilt for saying something innocently that I took offensively, and because I had insisted. It was impossible to convince myself that I was asking Ms. Barnes out on a date because I wanted to be with her, since I was doing this to apologize for my bad behavior and insulting her innocent mistake. We were both probably thinking to ourselves that we were doing the other a favor.

Nevertheless, I decided to at least make a decent showing and not embarrass Ms. Barnes by dressing a little more upscale for the office: slacks on the higher end of business casual; a button-down shirt that could accept a tie in a fashionable way; a blazer that I could toss over the office chair with the aforementioned tie in a pocket for later; and a shave. I didn't want to go completely overboard and have my management think that I was dressing for an interview with a rival company at lunchtime, because I hadn't been with the firm long enough for them to think more than five seconds about replacing me with a recent graduate lower on the pay scale. Work was busy enough to keep me working through lunch and to keep my mind off of my evening's activities.

Just before normal quitting time, I got a message.

 _dbarnes : Are we still on for tonight?_

I had not dared to contact Diana over the messaging system. I did not want to be discovered sending message after message to a coworker when I was supposed to be head-down on my latest assignment. Also, I didn't want to discover that Diana had come to her senses during the evening and chose to cancel, so I did not tempt fate by contacting her first. I responded immediately before she could possibly fear the worst.

 _davidg : Absolutely. Just have to finish things here and slip out before the boss gives me an overtime assignment._

 _dbarnes : Take all the time you need. PM me when you're ready. Ill be here._

 _davidg : Will do, shouldn't be too long._

I was another ten minutes, just basic tidying up so that I could pick up tomorrow without needing to spend an hour trying to find out where I left off the day before. I sent her a message to inform her that I was on my way after a stop in the restroom first. I knotted on my tie, tossed on my blazer, checked my reflection in the restroom mirror to make sure I did not appear to be a psycho-killer, and headed down the stairs and exited into the Accounting department lobby.

Diana Barnes had chosen to impress.

I found Diana waiting in the lobby area in a navy blue dress suit and low pumps, her neck-length auburn hair freshly brushed. She was transferring her small purse from hand to hand nervously as she waited. The dress was definitely a step in the more conservative and formal direction from the one I remembered her wearing the day before, but well shy of the night at the opera type. It was an outfit that might have made some in her office wonder if she had plans for the evening, but not the type that gave any hint whatsoever as to what those plans might involve. Being what modern fashion magazines would politely term a "plus size," Diana had selected an outfit which admirably disguised any additional pound or two that she possessed.

I saw a woman who was trying to make as good a first impression as possible, and somewhat afraid that she wasn't accomplishing that.

It had been a long, long time since anyone had cared about the impression that they had made with me. I suddenly felt like I hadn't given as much effort in doing the same, and I started scanning through my memorized First Lines to find one fitting for her attempt. All of them were pitifully insufficient. Given how yesterday went, I dared not play towards sarcasm with the You Clean Up Nicely line, because I didn't know yet if she could properly translate sarcasm and would instead take it as an insult. I also decided against using a joke, because I had yet to feel out her sense of humor. I wanted to go with honesty, but I couldn't find adequate words.

"Wow," I whispered, settling on that. It was a hokey reaction, but it was an honest one.

"Yeah, wow," Diana blushed, looking at me.

"I'm feeling a little under-dressed," I managed, still struggling for some adequate response. "You look..."

Diana stood nervous, waiting for me to finish my sentence.

"Wonderful," I finished, trying not to grimace at my fumbling attempt at flattery.

"So do you?" she winced as she replied, seeming ashamed of her own words.

A smile used to help me lighten a nervous mood, so I flashed one. "Thanks, but you're the one everyone's going to be looking at, not me."

She blushed even brighter. "I look like I'm going to a job interview," she whispered.

"You look lovely," I assured her as I came to a stop two paces away from her. She acted like someone worried that she was trying to play way out of her league. I knew that she would have that misconception corrected by the end of the night, once she found out what an idiot I truly was. But for now, she was seeing me as a gentleman, so I decided to act the part. "Have you decided where you'd like to go this evening?"

Diana looked away for a moment. "There's a seafood restaurant three blocks west of here and an Italian restaurant four blocks east."

After a pause, I concluded that she was asking me to help choose. "My family's part Italian, but I can do either. This is supposed to be your choice, remember?"

"Italian it is," she smiled, and reached to press the button for the elevator.

It was an unseasonably warm day, so we chose to walk. Both Diana and I made feeble attempts at small talk along the way, and we both criticized our personal incompetence at it. I found myself oddly relieved that she was as bad at banter as I had become, because I felt that she didn't need small talk to impress her. Along the way, I found out the meager basics: she had worked for the firm for almost four years; she lived in the suburbs; she commuted to the city each day. I reciprocated with my own basic details: graduated five years ago; considering an eventual return to grad school part time for a Masters once I could afford it; employed by the company for little more than a year; lived in town trying to save up for a better place. Aside from Paula, none of the co-workers we asked each other about rang any bells.

I had seen the Italian restaurant before but I had never tried it; dining alone doesn't exactly boost your own self image. I was pleased to discover that they had several available tables, and we were seated quickly. Diana refused to order a drink, even after I assured her that the limit on my credit card could take it. Instead, she chose plain water. I followed suit, glad that her choice had let me escape the Social Drinking effort. After our orders were taken and our salads delivered, we each ventured tentatively into further details about the other, trying to find out more without invading more than recent acquaintances were allowed. I divulged that the firm was my second employer after the first one went bankrupt in the last Recession, that my apartment was what could be politely called a "dive," that I'd never been married or engaged, that I hadn't been seeing anyone seriously since my college days, and yes that included Paula who always seemed to keep me at arm's length. She told me that she was living with her mother and sister but hoping to be able to afford her own apartment soon, that she got the job at the firm through a friend who no longer worked there, that her father died from cancer unexpectedly two years ago, that she hadn't been seeing anyone for a couple of years, and that she had been engaged twice but both engagements fell through.

Even though I had just met this woman, I could see that she was ashamed to admit that last piece of personal history. I was trying to avoid any reference to previous relationships, but she offered that tidbit on her own. Her hand was stroking the stem of her water glass in an effort to relieve her building nervous energy. I gently touched her hand.

"I'm sorry to hear about that," I offered gently.

Before I could go further, our main courses arrived. The interruption gave us an excuse to be less inquisitive about each other and something else to talk about for a few minutes. I found myself being incredibly concerned about how I looked while eating. I mean, how often do we think about how ugly a visual that stuffing our faces is in real life? You can be suave while drinking, but watching some people eat could remind you of how sausage was made. Fortunately, Diana did not act repulsed by my eating habits, so started worrying less about it. Making subtle reference to her weight, Diana decided against a dessert even though I assured her that I felt she could splurge this one time.

Dinner went well for something that was for all intents and purposes a blind date. We exchanged some stiff attempts at more small talk while we waited for the check to arrive, but although the attempt at banter was a bit awkward, I was not finding her company awkward at all. For the first time in a long time, I did not feel like I was under examination for the entire date. Maybe it was because I wasn't treating it like a true date and I wasn't expecting anything from it. However, all the signals that I was receiving from Diana made it clear that she felt that she was being scrutinized. Again, I reached out and touched her hand gently.

"Thank you for having dinner with me," I said with a smile. "I haven't been this comfortable with anyone in a long time."

Her hand froze and her eyes went wide in obvious disbelief. "Really?"

"Really," I assured her. "Usually, when I'm out with a girl, I feel like she's got me under a microscope."

Diana gave a relieved smile for a moment, but then she looked away as some thought within her began to could her face.

I knew that look. It was the same look Lisa used to give me,. The "nothing" look.

I struggled to keep the sudden panic and self hatred from gaining too much control of my face and voice. As gently as I could manage, I whispered, "what's wrong?"

"Oh, nothing," she said defensively.

There was that damned word again, the word that was sure to be etched on my tombstone someday.

"I must have said something wrong," I tried again. "Because you were fine until I said 'microscope.' I know I just met you, but I can see this is 'something.' Can I help?"

Diana gave a weak smile that shook with embarrassment. "I... I just don't know how to say something."

"Take your time," I encouraged, trying to let her know that I wanted to hear this "something".

She took a shuddering inhale of breath, held it for a moment, and then whispered, "I'm not trying to have sex with you."

I know that, being a man, I am supposed to therefore be a pig, one driven by the insatiable hunger of the One Eyed Beast dangling from my crotch. However, whenever I allowed that hunger to drive me in the past, I wound up losing the woman in the process: Terry, Donna, and my dear Lisa. Each time, it was clear that sex was the next logical stage in the relationship, but none of my relationships survived it. Hearing from Diana that sex was not expected in exchange for her company lifted a freight train of weight off my emotional shoulders.

I gave her a wide smile that I fought to keep friendly. "Would you be offended if I told you that I'm happy to hear that?"

Apparently she was offended, judging from the glare she flashed me.

"I have to admit something," I started to explain. "Yes, I've... had sex... with girls before. But the last few times, that ended very badly. So I'm not all that sure I'm any good at it. I'd hate to do that and have this relationship end before it even has a chance to begin."

The offended look transformed instantly into a look of surprise. "Begin?"

I shrugged nonchalantly. "Why not? Like I said, I've not been this comfortable with someone in a long time. I'd like to spend some more time with you. See where it goes."

For an instant, I wondered if I really meant that, or if I was just being kind. The truth is that I was a bit of both, but I had been sincere when I said that I had been comfortable in her company. Why not see if this was going to go somewhere? Why not see if this was the miracle for which I had long waited? Why not give it some effort and see if I could finally make that miracle happen? Diana seemed like an honest woman, even if she was incorrectly feeling a bit outclassed by me. Honesty was far better than I received from Paula from the start and Lisa at the end; both Shirley and Donna never knew the word's definition.

Diana did not appear ready for such an answer. "Really?"

"Unless you don't want to," I reassured her. "Stalking's not my thing."

She chuckled nervously.

"How about I give you my cellphone number?" I asked. I pulled out a business card from my blazer pocket, one where I scratched out the name on one side and had already put my name and number on the reverse. I offered it to her politely. "You think about it, and if you want to do this again, you give me a call?"

"Uh," she stuttered.

"I'm not asking for yours," I added. "Not until you decide I've earned the right to have it."

I noticed the effort that it took for Diana to force a smile on her face, but it looked to me that she was struggling more with an inferiority complex than a revulsion. "Okay."

I signed the check, adding in a tip appropriate for someone who wanted to come back to this restaurant someday and not be treated like dirt, because the food and the service had been excellent. "Anything else you'd like to do this evening?"

"I really ought to get back home," she said. Her voice sounded reluctant instead of insulted.

I decided to read the tone of voice as a positive sign. I escorted her to the curb and flagged down a taxi cab, handed the driver some money and instructed him to take Diana to the nearest train station. Before Diana stepped into the cab, I gave her the ancient, long-dead gesture of a kiss to the back of her hand which appeared to dumbfound her. She watched me for as long as she could while her taxi cab drove away.

I stood there, oddly relieved. For once, I had not made a shocking mess of things. Yes, there were plenty of things that I could have said surfacing in my mind now that the pressure to find them was gone. There were also a few dumb conversational penalties that could have drawn a flag from the referee. But the evening had gone well.

Diana was a nice girl.

I hadn't known one of those in a long, long time.

I flagged down another cab and headed back to my armpit of an apartment. During the ride, I continued to replay the dinner in my head, the post-game analyst in my brain picking it apart and magnifying every insignificant blunder into an almost game-ending mistake. In spite of those miscues, things had gone well. Diana was indeed a nice girl, an honest girl who did not seem to need to be impressed. At no point did I feel like she was analyzing me, interviewing me, checking my background or my credit history, holding me to some standard of worthiness. I didn't need to be something I wasn't for the entire evening.

That's when the doubt began to creep in. True, Diana had not held me to a standard, but I had held her to one, although I was doing it subconsciously. I had started this because I was lonely, and a lonely beggar could not be a chooser. I had tried to measure her on the Lisa Williams Scale when I first saw her. That was probably why she spent most of the dinner thinking that I was scrutinizing her, seeing if she measured up to the usual male standard of the gorgeous sexpot.

 _Nice Going, Shit For Brains._

I wasn't going to let my self loathing ruin this now. I had a good night out with a nice girl, and I was going to take that as a fortunate success and nothing else.

I had just switched on the light in my apartment when I felt my cellphone vibrate. I had switched it to silent mode during my dinner with Diana. I didn't recognize the calling number, but it appeared to be from the local area code. Even though the local area code was home to many a phone scam, I chanced answering it.

"Hello?"

"Hi, David."

I did not know if I should be relieved or nervous. "Hi, Diana."

"I'm sorry. I was barely fifty feet down the road when I realized that I didn't say that I had a good time tonight."

I smiled in relief. "It's okay. We're both working without a script here. Besides, you looked like you had a nice time with me."

"I did, David," she said. "And I was thinking about what you said at the end."

"Yes?"

"Are... are you sure you want to do this again?"

"Yes, I'm sure," I answered.

"I just want to make sure you're not just saying that because you're supposed to say it," she pressed.

"I don't lie very well, Diana," I said. "Every time I try, someone catches me at it. Yes, I'd like the chance to see you again."

"Monday after work?" From the tone in her voice, I could visualize her wincing on the other end of the line.

"Sure," I answered. "You can introduce me to that seafood restaurant."

"How about you pick a place you like this time?" she suggested.

"Don't know many places besides takeout pizza," I confessed. "So I'll go with your expertise for a bit, if that's okay?"

"The seafood place is a little pricey," she warned.

"It's okay. I've been saving up my credit limit for a rainy day."

"Who says you're paying for it?" she responded.

I chuckled. She wasn't as old-fashioned as she first seemed. "How about you give yourself a little time to figure out if I'm not a con man before you go offering to buy me dinner? Let's keep to the stereotypes for a little bit longer and let the guy pay for the date for now?"

"Only for now," she accepted.

"See you Monday," I confirmed.

"Maybe sooner at the office?" she suggested.

"Sure, maybe sooner," I agreed.

There was a small pause, after which Diana said, "I really did have a good time tonight, David."

"So did I," I responded honestly.

"See you later," she said dejectedly, as if she were trying to find an excuse to prolong the conversation but coming up empty.

I tried to find an excuse as well, but under the pressure to find one, my brain wiffed. "See you later, Diana."

"Goodnight."

"Goodnight," I echoed.

I listened around for a moment, waiting for that voice-over to start. Waiting for my self-loathing to surface.

 _You'll still fuck this up._

Yeah, it hadn't died yet. But at least it was shutting up for now.


	7. Chapter 7 - The Monster

I hope you'll pardon me for fast-forwarding in this narrative and skipping over four months' worth of dates with Diana. You might think I'm doing this is because I'm not able to spin a narrative that would keep your interest, and you'd be partially correct, but not for the reason you'd think at first. It's not because I can't spin an interesting narrative; it's because there's really nothing of interest to report.

Other couples have exciting interests that you can use to fill anywhere from a few paragraphs to a few chapters. Things like sports, travel, kinky sex...

We epitomized "boring."

It turns out that "boring" is okay sometimes. "Boring" was just what I needed right then: no pressure, just show up and be yourself and be happy for a change. "Boring" was good, but it was hardly anything that could be embellished into an interesting tale.

It turned out that we did not have much in common, but that didn't seem to stop us. She was not concerned with sports like I was, and I did not share her passion for black-and-white movies. I played guitar, sort-of; she played piano but had not practiced in a couple of years. Diana preferred board games; I preferred playing out the hero online, since I could not be a hero anywhere else. She wished for simple answers; I felt that many problems had complexities reaching back centuries. But we both liked simple things: courtesy, honesty, common sense. We thought deceit, greed, and bigotry were evils that society should eliminate instead of ignoring. We both valued family. We appreciated honest talk. We liked walking. We liked sightseeing. We liked classical music. Although we didn't share a lot of hobbies, we shared enough interests and common ground to give us an excuse to continue seeing each other.

Our first kiss came in rom-com fashion in the middle of the main train station at the end of our second date. Despite the hundreds of people milling about, we seemed to have all the privacy we needed in the middle of the main floor next to the Information booth. I was a little out of practice at it, but I soon remembered how to kiss a woman. Diana certainly knew how to kiss a man, and did it damned well.

After about five dates, what we really discovered is that we just wanted to be with each other. We didn't need a picnic in the park to give us a reason to be with each other, or a fancy dinner, or a musical in midtown. We even gave up the dinner-and-a-movie cliché, which wasn't hard considering that Hollywood was turning out turd after turd those four months.

There were two significant developments in those four months which I should mention, because they are important.

The first was that I moved into the greater metropolitan area, a little further upriver. Diana was quickly becoming someone that I wanted to spend time with alone so that we were not under the scrutiny of the omnipresent random public every time we were together. But my apartment was no place to bring a woman unless she was the pay-by-the-hour type. Diana helped me find a new apartment in the northern suburbs that was a twenty-five minute train ride from my midtown job, a ten minute walk from the station, and a fifteen minute cab ride from her family's place. I got about double the space, triple the privacy and infinite improvement in the noise level for less money, even if it was a wash monetarily because I used what I saved in rent to pay for the new longer commute. Thankfully, those commutes were not exercises in solitary confinement, because Diana rode the same line at the same time with me.

The second...

The second is the one that still hurts to mention, because it concerns the monster.

I knew the monster was lurking in the shadows, and those shadows were quickly retreating. Soon it would be exposed in the light of day I would no longer be able to ignore it. I piloted through all the checkpoints in the Dating Progress Chart: the first date; the awkward first kiss; the exchanging of phone numbers and addresses; the romantic dinner; the junior-high-school heavy petting session; meeting her family; the Embarrassing Parade Of Past Failures, where I bared my soul about Lisa Williams and she let loose her frustrations with Peter. I was now down to the Final Four: meeting my family; living together; the Proposal; and...

...The monster. The destroyer of all my relationships. The beast that ate Lisa and me and shat us out.

Sex.

I was terrified of that monster, and not of what it would do to me. I was afraid of what it would do to Diana.

It had surprised me how gently, how unnoticeably Diana had become important to me. Perhaps it was because I had not gone into this relationship expecting it to go anywhere but just to fill the space in my life until I figured myself out. Perhaps it was because I was so focused on the monster and keeping it in the shadows. Perhaps it was because I had placed so much importance on sex in my relationships before now, making sure that I was giving as much as I was taking from it, trying to make it an act of mutual affection and not the satisfaction of a biological urge. With Diana, I was not giving sex any importance at all, because it had destroyed the best thing I ever had and I did not want it destroying this, destroying her.

I was oblivious to how much I needed her until one Thursday when Diana had to cancel our standing weekly date night because she had to head home early for a doctor's appointment upstate. I missed her company so much that night that I was miserable, far more miserable than I had been before I started dating her. More miserable than when Lisa Williams began consuming my every thought again.

I finally knew for sure. Diana was important to me. Diana had long ago become more than simple loneliness therapy. Diana was... my girlfriend.

 _Girlfriend? Did I even know that the word meant anymore?_

 _Did I deserve one, going into this relationship like I did? Trying to prove more to myself than I was to her?_

 _Had I evolved, changed? Was I worthy?_

 _Was this my chance?_

The monster began snarling in the corner of my mind, its saliva dripping from its yellowed fangs with anticipation of fresh meat to devour.

I'd been here once before, and I fucked it all up. _Dear God, how do I not screw it up this time?!_

There was only one answer that I could see: keep the monster leashed.

Unfortunately, leashing a monster does not mean that the monster cannot also cause catastrophic damage, especially when someone else decides to yank its chain.

Which is exactly what Diana did without realizing what she was doing.

We had decided to head to my apartment after a small dinner to just relax. I didn't have a car yet, so Diana was doing the driving. The plan - as I understood it - was just to just sit around and enjoy each other's company, maybe do a little light petting along the way, but nothing more than what would be acceptable for junior-high-school-chaperoned dating content. That was fine with me, because "boring" was just what I needed as I contemplated how I was going to possibly handle the monster with so little checkpoints left in our relationship between us and it.

"You really ought to take a trip to IKEA," Diana joked as she surveyed the sparse contents of my apartment with its hand-me down furniture and large, vacant space intended for a dining room table and chairs.

"Overlooking the fact that I don't have a car and you have an econobox," I bantered back, "how do you propose that I get those cartons up two flights of steps?"

"I'll help," she insisted.

I looked at her in mock appraisal.

"Uh, maybe not?" she muttered.

I mentally kicked myself. Damn, if life didn't need a dress rehearsal for every damned scene. Now I had gone and silently berated her girly strength. _Nice Going, Shit For Brains._ Trying to make the best of a stupid mistake, I added, "I'd ask some of my friends from work, but they only sports teams they were even on were the Mouse-Button Clickers. I'd have to take most of them to the emergency room afterwards for sprains and strains."

"Can I use the bathroom?", she asked, seeming eager to change the subject. Either that, or eager to purge bilges.

"Sure," I answered. First, I knew it was clean. Second, I knew there was paper in the roll. Last, if a woman ever needed anything in life that wasn't already in her purse, it was a bathroom. I let her go about her business as I headed over to the stereo. Turning it on, I knelt in front of it and looked in my music CDs in the lower drawer for some 1960's smooth jazz that my cubical-mate in work had recently introduced to me. It seemed a good for background music: no lyrics, no furious shrieking of random notes, and nothing that sounded like cheesy make-out music. Finding it, I slipped it into the CD player and let the device come to life at low volume.

Turning on my knee, I suddenly found myself facing a woman's crotch. Literally. Not a woman's slacks or belt or underwear, but a naked crotch covered in dark pubic hair.

If I had stared at Medusa's face, I could not have been turned more to stone than at that moment.

I remembered telling Diana a few weeks back when she was trying to plant subtle hints as to where our next date should be that I no longer played the Hinting Game. I had been thick as a brick with Lisa and it had cost me everything, and I did not want to repeat the same mistake with Diana by either misinterpreting any signals that she was sending or not noticing those signals entirely.

Obviously, the bathroom trip was a ruse. Diana had decided against subtlety, opting instead of the ten-pound sledgehammer form of a hint by leaving her pants and underwear back there.

Diana stood before me, an embarrassed but anticipating smile on her face, waiting for my reaction.

The beast awoke, growled, and yanked against its chain so hard that the anchors almost flew out of the dungeon wall.

I'm ashamed to admit this, since it paints me as more of a wuss than before, if that is even possible from reading this far into my story. But let's be truthful here. I panicked.

 _Damn it, I'm not ready for this! Not yet!_

I'm an architect, which means that the work that I do is planned out in detail, accounting not only for what is supposed to go right but also accounting for the thousands of things that can go wrong. If you fail to account for harmonic frequency disruption in your plans for a bridge, the bridge will waver like an accordion and collapse. The same if you fail to account for crosswinds, or forces of high and low tide, or thousands of migrating geese perching themselves on the suspension cables, or the once-a-century Category 5 hurricane, or heavier than anticipated traffic, or the weight of vehicles and ice, or traffic moving 10 miles per hour faster than the posted speed limit which always happens. Anything critical needed to be planned out, accounting for contingencies and putting in place safeguards for failure. I was good at that, because I had practiced much of that preparation in my own life with anything that I considered important. Anything that was important was worth doing right.

But when it came to women, I sucked at that. Just ask Lisa Williams.

Sex with Diana was the most critical risk I had ever contemplated in my life, because there was no woman on the planet that I wanted to please more than her. She was the most important thing in my life, something I didn't dare risk losing. However, I had yet to plan for the contingencies. I had no safeguards in place. We hadn't discussed it at all since that first date, although I had purposely overlooked her recent hints. I didn't know anything about her experience with her ex-fiancé Peter and what emotional baggage that carried. I had yet to piece together enough of the Diana Barnes puzzle to find if the straight-laced persona she used in public was going to be the same one she used when we were intimate. I didn't know if her romantic tastes mirrored the old black-and-white movies she watched, or if they would clash with my more modern expectations. I didn't even know if Davie Junior would stand at Attention once the clothes came off, or if my terror of screwing this up would keep me limp no matter how many Orion Slave Girls suddenly beamed down into the bedroom.

All I had was a leashed monster in my head that had already destroyed the best thing I ever had, and no idea how I was going to prevent it from doing the same thing again with this young woman who was beginning to wipe the memory of Lisa Williams from my mind.

I had remained frozen and silent too long. The anticipatory smile dropped into a quivering frown and the eyes above them turned red and watery.

I quickly rose and tried to wrap her in my arms, but I was a second too late. First, I had belittled her strength, and now, I hadn't giving her the lusting reaction she expected. The combination proved to be too much for Diana to accept.

"What the fuck, David?!," she barked and shoved me away. She then marched heavily to the bathroom, cursing me as she went. "I'm good enough to take out but not good enough to take home? Is that it?!"

All decks, brace for impact, here comes the Earth Shattering Kaboom...

"No, that's not it!" I shouted after her as I followed, only to have the bathroom door slammed in my face. The door barely muted her voice as her rant came forth.

"Guess I'm not hot enough for you?!" she accused. "Not so ugly that I can't be seen in public with you, I guess. But want anything closer than that? No! No, Diana's too damned _ugly_ , too damned _fat_!"

"That's not true!" I protested, but even I heard how unconvincing those words were. A substitute soap opera actor could do better.

"You've screwed every other girl!" she yelled. "You screwed Debbie...!"

Who the hell was Debbie? Before I realized that she meant to say Donna, she was on to the next accusation.

"You screwed Paula!"

"I never slept with Paula!" I shouted back in reflex before I could stop myself. It was a pointless denial, because she wouldn't have believed me if I told her that white was indeed white under the influence of her anger.

"Sure, and Clinton never screwed 'that woman'!" she barked. "That's what 'boredom therapy' is with Paula! Sex! You screwed her, alright!"

And then the war went nuclear.

"And _Lisa_!," Diana laughed harshly behind the door. "Oh, if I hear Little Miss Perfect's name one more fucking time, I'll _rip your fucking throat out_! I'm _never_ going to measure up to her! I don't even know why I'm _trying_...!"

Unfortunately, Lisa's name was still hard-wired into my Angry Response system. At the mention of it, I wrenched the doorknob, breaking the cheap lock inside of it and shoved the door opened before my better sense got a grip on my emotions. The sight of Diana - standing with one leg in her slacks and her eye make-up running in a stained river down the sides of her nose - shocked me back to reality. She glared back at me with such anger and misery that I should have been struck dead instantly.

"Tell me again about Little Miss Perfect," she growled and then sniffled as more tears came down. She then resumed both her dressing and her tirade. "The 'best thing you ever had,' right?! You know how it makes me feel to hear you say that all the damned time?! Like I'm _nothing_! Like I'm just someone you're using until the next Lisa comes along!"

I swear to Heaven that I wanted to apologize for that right then, but Diana had sucked all the air out of the room and I couldn't breathe anymore, let alone attempt to mount a defense.

"I don't know what I was thinking!" she raved on. "I thought that maybe you misinterpreted me on our first date, but it turns out I misunderstood you! It wasn't that you didn't want to have sex with me _then_ , it was that you don't want to have sex with me _ever_! I should've known a plain, dumpy girl like me had no chance with a guy like you! But I let you get my hopes up! Yeah, stupid Diana, trusting a man again! After my father and Peter - twice! - I should have learned my damned lesson! But no, Diana's got to learn the hard way! Diana always has to learn things the _damned hard way_!"

"Honey...," I whispered, finally getting enough breath to at least make a feeble attempt at an apology. And trust me, it was going to be feeble if I got anywhere beyond the first word, but I didn't.

"You don't have the right to call me that!" she growled, her head snapping back up and her eyes blasting lasers at me. "Only a friend can call me that! You aren't! In fact, you can't call me _anything_ anymore! _Don't_ call me! _Don't_ message me! _Don't_ text me! _Don't_ send flowers to the house! _Don't_ send a friend to talk to me! _Don't_ accidentally stop by the office! _Don't_ even fucking look at me if we see each other on the damned train, because you are nothing to me! _Good fucking bye_!"

She ran faster than I had ever seen her run before passed me, slamming the apartment door on her way out.

This is the point in the rom-com where the male lead is supposed to step directly into the path of the female lead's car and trust that she will brake hard and not run him over, proving that he loves her enough to risk his life and that her love will eventually conquer her misplaced anger. Trouble was, Diana's anger was not misplaced. Every shot had hit a bulls-eye in my heart. Everything she had said had about Lisa been true once, and she was never going to believe me if I tried to tell her that it wasn't true anymore. I wasn't even sure that I would believe it myself.

I let her drive off in a squeal of spinning tires that the whole apartment complex heard, and I did nothing to stop her. Not because she was right, but because I couldn't convince myself that she was wrong.

And damn it, if I didn't hate myself more than ever because of it.

I had kept the monster on a leash, on purpose, just to avoid this. But it still destroyed me. Destroyed her. Destroyed us. Just because it was there, just because it existed.

Destroyed...

My fists clenched.

 _No...!_

My molars ground against each other in anger.

 _Not this time...!_

I felt the flame flash hot from my eyes.

 _Not her!_

I stormed across the room and ripped my cellphone from the top of the bureau.

 _Damn it, not her! She's innocent! It's not taking her too! Not without a fight!_

I unlocked my cellphone and went to the favorite contact list. I hurriedly tapped the screen.

"Yes? I need a cab at 15 Styvesant. Fast as you can. I don't care what it costs, but get it here now!"

The taxi took forever to arrive. The clock on my phone tried to convince me that only ten minutes had passed, but I was sure that it was lying to me because the monster made it lie to me. Fifteen minutes after that, I was back in the cab with a floral arrangement half as tall as I was, throwing a heavy tip towards the driver to get me to the suburbs by the fastest possible route. Twenty minutes further, I was two houses down from her family's house, dumping the remainder of my wallet's contents into the palm of the driver's hand and ordering him to leave.

Why did I send the driver off? I knew myself well enough to realize that, had I left myself a path to retreat, I would chicken out and use it. It was time to be a man for the first time in my life. I pulled out my cellphone again, looked in the favorites, and tapped. I had already violated two of her demands, but I figured that I would warn her in advance that I was about to violate another.

The phone rang three times.

"Hello..."

The voice was dull and hurt, but I recognized it.

"This is your idiot ex-boyfriend," I announced. "I'm going to be knocking on your front door in about two minutes. Just give me two minutes more of your life, and then you can do with me whatever you want. I won't stop you."

Long silence replied.

"Diana?" I prodded.

"Okay," came the hesitant reply.

Three minutes later - again, according to my lying cellphone clock - I knocked on her front door. It opened, revealing Diana in a bathrobe that was drawn tightly around her. The look she gave me made it clear that a gift of flowers was going to be insufficient as an apology.

I hadn't meant them as an apology. I was wielding them more like a shield, intending them as an initial offer in the peace negotiations.

"Come in," she curtly said, taking the flowers from me and heading further into the house. I waited in the entryway until she returned. Diana gestured towards the living room, which was completely vacant.

"Two minutes, starting now," she said, and sat rigidly in a padded chair. She avoided the sofa seemingly on purpose, letting me know in no uncertain terms that she was off-limits until she decided otherwise.

Two minutes to save my life. Hardly enough time. But probably more time than my life merited to this point.

"You deserve the truth," I managed to stammer out. I sat gracelessly on the sofa without waiting for her invitation and I stared at an arrangement of paper flowers in the corner of the room to focus on something other than her. I needed to focus, and I didn't want to witness what harm my words were going to do to her.

"Sex is the 800 pound gorilla in my life," I began. "It's what kept Terry and me together as long as it did. It's the only thing Donna and I had between each other. And..."

Fear clamped its invisible fist around my throat and constricted it. Breathing became a conscious effort. My words struggled out in a strangled gasp and tears began to sting the corners of my eyes. But for Diana's sake, I had to continue.

"...And it's what ruined my life with Lisa; destroyed it, destroyed me. Every relationship that gets to the Sex Phase with me... dies. Dies painfully."

I finally dared to look at her.

My prelude to the apology had captivated her interest, but at the moment, it seemed to be the shocked interest of a passerby seeing the mangled wreck of two smoldering automobiles with bodies strewn alongside. She sat stiffly with her hands clasped nervously in her lap, her fingers intertwining and wringing around each other.

"Diana, I care about you," I said, and for the first time, those words did not sound hollow to me. "You're the best thing to happen to me in a long time, maybe ever. For the first time in a very, very long time, I'm ready to risk falling in love again."

I gulped, an effort made much more painful by the fear clamping down around it with its strangling grip. It's amazing how uttering that one-syllable word - love - immediately conjures another one: fear.

"But I'm more afraid of this than I've ever been afraid of anything in my life. I can't risk losing what we've got. I can't let that monster back into my life again, I can't let it ruin this! If it destroys me, okay; maybe I deserve it, maybe I'm supposed to live out my life alone, I don't know. But you're innocent in all this! I can't let it destroy you!"

Diana sniffled but did not reply. In the silence, I could no longer sense the growling of her anger. Perhaps I was only imagining it, but I began to feel the gentle warmth of concern. For now, she was giving me all the space I needed to continue, but she was not abandoning me.

I looked back at the paper flower arrangement in a silent plea for inspiration to continue. It did not give me much of a response.

"I'm sorry that... that I'm making you feel less of a woman because I'm not trying to have sex with you," I continued. "I'm sorry if that makes you feel like I don't think you're beautiful or attractive. The last thing I want to do to you is make you feel inferior..."

Damn, my eyes were beginning to sting painfully. My words were also beginning to tremble. The dam holding back years of pain and failure and self hatred was beginning to crack down the middle. But I had to continue the confession for her sake.

"You've been wonderful to me," I said, forcing myself onward. "You've been patient. Kind. Understanding. You haven't judged me. And I've been an ass. I went into this expecting nothing from it. Something to do while I tried to sort my life out. But then, you began to mean something to me. You became important. You became someone I wanted to be with, not just someone I could be with. I started to care again. I started to care about you, about your life, about what made you happy, about how I could make you happy.

"But then I came face to face with the monster," I admitted. "I couldn't avoid it any longer. There were no other stages left. It was the next logical step. And I couldn't play the 'saving myself for marriage' card because you knew better by then. But if I go there..."

The first tear streaked down the left side of my nose. I hurriedly wiped it away, but in reflex I sniffled.

 _Oh, we're being so very manly today, aren't we? Quite a show to put on while you're apologizing before the woman you're begging to take you back. If she doesn't find this whole scene childish, she'll think it's an act_.

However, sincerity was the only currency I had left.

"If I let that monster loose and it wrecks this..."

Now I had to wipe the right side of my nose.

"I don't want sex to define us. It's defined all my other relationships. It's what I built those relationships around, and they all went down in a flaming wreck. I can't let that happen again. I want to build a relationship around trust, understanding, caring... l-love..."

Yes, I said that simple-looking, hard-to-say-convincingly word again. When you've got nothing left to loose, you're ready to risk everything.

"And I finally see that chance here with you..."

I risked a look back at her.

She was sitting erect, trying very hard to control the quivering in her lower lip. The whites of her eyes were taking on a pink tinge.

"...But I can't let you believe that I don't find you attractive," I rambled on, beginning the circular explanation again. "I can't let you feel like I don't see you as a woman, that I think you don't measure up to the girls in my past, that I'm comparing you to some standard and deciding that you're not desirable. I haven't wanted so much in so long to please a woman as I want to please you and make you happy, but..."

 _But the monster lurks in the shadows of my life, ready to pillage, plunder, and burn all in its path._

I swallowed. The effort to do so was not growing any easier, and my explanation was spinning over itself.

"You've let me see inside your heart," I whispered vulnerably as I stared at the floor. "I'm letting you see inside mine. Diana, I'm afraid. I've always been afraid. I once ruined the closest thing I've ever had to love and now I'm afraid that I'll ruin everything I touch. And now, I have this chance, this glorious, wonderful chance thanks to you, but... I'm afraid! Diana, you're looking at a coward."

She practically leaped from her chair and crashed down into the sofa beside be. She flung her left arm around my shoulder and yanked me against her with it. She pointed in strict school teacher fashion at me with her right hand.

"You are not a coward!" she scolded me in a trembling whisper. "Peter was a coward! My father was a coward! I know what a coward is, and you are not a coward!"

I cocked my head like old Farley did when our Golden Retriever was confused by something.

"You are the bravest man I've ever known," she continued, her voice growing louder but trembling under the weight of heavy emotion. "No man has ever dared to be this honest with me!"

"How do you know I'm not just putting on an act?" I asked meekly, because even then, I could not say for sure that I wasn't.

She gave me a smile that trembled like a California earthquake and raised her right arm to circle around my neck. She leaned her forehead against mine and closed her eyes.

"Because I've learned who you are," she replied simply.

I scoffed. "Yeah, a broken, desperate, stupid, idiot coward."

"No," she corrected me in a trembling voice. "You're the man I love."

Four words.

Four words that I could not remember anyone ever saying about me before.

Not even Lisa.

True, Lisa and I did say The Three Little Words to each other and probably meant them a few of those times, before the monster destroyed us and we were just saying those words to soothe our feelings and ignore our problems. But even Lisa - the closest thing I ever had before now to a Happily Ever After - never called me The Man I Love.

I knew that Diana liked me. I knew that Diana cared about me. I knew that Diana thought that she could "make do" with me as a boyfriend. I knew that Diana wanted to be more intimate than I was allowing. But I had no idea that I meant _this_ much to her.

With those four words, I suddenly felt so small, so petty, so arrogant, so villainous, so unworthy, so asininely stupid. For starting our relationship with a Beggars Can't Be Choosers mentality. For using her at first as a simple antidote to loneliness. For judging her against a standard. For making her feel unattractive and inferior. For viewing her through the prism of Lisa Williams. For not giving her and this relationship my full and honest effort until it was beginning to crash down around me and destroy her in the process.

"I haven't earned that," I said, my words coughing roughly out of a dry throat.

"Yes, you did," she wept in reply. "Five minutes ago."

That was the brick that finally dislodged in the dam holding back my pain, my bitterness, my shame. Once that brick tumbled free, the others followed, and the emotions they held back gushed forth through the gap, ripping loose more bricks in a torrent of tears that I could not staunch no matter how hard I tried.

I don't know how long she cradled my head against her chest, sopping up my tears and muffling my sobs with her robe so that her mother and sister wouldn't hear. I don't know how many times she whispered, "it's alright," into my ear to console me. What I do know is that I could feel the radiant, healing love beaming from her halo and the soft breeze that the whispering flutter of her angel wings created around me.

I had been falling, racing without a parachute at meteoric speed towards a head-first crash for five years, and God had finally sent an Angel to catch me. Being the damned fool that I was, I hadn't seen it before now. I didn't deserve it, I hadn't earned it, but I had at long last been saved.

Oddly enough, a conversation with a tall, bespectacled brunette resurfaced in my head.

 _Miracles happen every day... only if we help make them happen._

Damn, Allison had been right. Who would have thought that the wife of my former girlfriend would provide exactly the push I needed exactly when I needed it? I was going to have to thank her for that someday. But not right now. My Angel deserved all the thanks that I could offer, and she was going to get every single bit of it.

I finally raised my head and blindly sought out her lips with mine. Only then did I know that she had been weeping harder than I had been. I tried to pour every ounce of my soul into her through that kiss, releasing myself entirely into her mercy as she had wished to do with me earlier that evening. I felt her tremble against me, her body wracked by a fear that mirrored my own. She had caught me, but now she was struggling to keep us aloft under our combined weight. I broke the kiss and wrapped her in my arms, resting my chin on her left shoulder.

"I've got you, Angel," I whispered into her ear. "I've got you. I'm never letting go. Lean on me for a change."

"I have been," she whimpered. "Leaning on you, letting you carry me... worried more about me than about you..."

"That's not true," I corrected her gently. "If that were true, you'd have slammed the door in my face five minutes ago."

"I'm sorry," she coughed.

"Don't be, I'm the fool here, not you."

"We're all fools," she said. "We demand perfection in an imperfect world. And when someone as near perfect as you comes along, all we focus on are the flaws."

"Guilty, Your Honor," I confessed, considering her to be a far shade closer to perfection with that glowing halo over her head than I was with the horns protruding out of mine. I then forced myself to whisper four words into her ear, four words that I prayed with all my heart would not sound hollow, because the rest of my life was riding on how she heard them.

"Diana, I love you."

Apparently, they did not sound hollow to my Angel.

"I love you too, David."

I will swear until my dying day that the room suddenly filled with a gentle light streaming directly from Heaven when she whispered those words. Instantly, all the shadows in my heart were dispelled, sending my stupid uncertainties and crippling fears fleeing, only for them to evaporate as that gentle light shined upon them in their flight. Well, all shadows except one in a distant recess of my mind, where a monster now cringed in a fetal ball as it stared wide-eyed at the light that crept inexorably towards it.

Bitter at losing its power over me, the monster snorted, dredging up the most bitter of my memories.

"Please, do me a favor?" I asked timidly.

"Anything," Diana sniffled back.

I pushed back from the embrace far enough that I could look her in the eyes.

"Promise me we'll never use the word 'nothing' with each other?" I gently begged.

Diana knew that story and understood what that word came to mean for me. She beamed to me a smile filled with love and commitment.

"I promise."

I knew. There were no more questions, no more doubts. I finally knew.

I loved this woman. _Great God Almighty, I loved this woman_! And damn it, I was going to prove it to her!


	8. Chapter 8 - The Monster Slayer

One week later, the scene was only slightly less awkward than the confession in her mother's living room. But I wouldn't change a thing. Well, maybe one thing, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

I had decided to demonstrate to Diana Barnes that I truly meant what I had said that evening, so this time I forced the issue that she had tried to force that day, doing it gently and without hints that could be misinterpreted. I also decided to go against my instincts and not plan this down to the nth degree: partially because I still wasn't sure what Diana would want, and partially because I wanted to leave it open for spontaneity. I did make sure that the apartment was clean, that the sheets had been laundered, and that I had a decent supply of candles that could cast enough light for us to see each other but not so much that either of us felt we were under a spotlight. If I did have a plan, it was a simple one: it was going to be all about her tonight.

The monster had lost its crippling power over me, but I had yet to banish my belief in my ability to fail, so I was more a nervous teenager than the confident man I was supposed to be. Worse, I still remembered what Donna and Lisa looked like naked. If ever I wanted the ability to purge memories forever, it was those two memories at that one time. Diana was now The One, and I didn't want my efforts to prove that to be ruined by ghosts from the past acting as critics from the mental sidelines. But no matter how much I wished them away, those ghosts existed, and I was worried that they would sabotage me. I could already see them in my mind's eye, sitting naked on the sidelines, and I could hear their pre-game analysis banter in the background noise of my thought.

Once Diana arrived, I shoved those concerns aside.

Whatever anxiety I was feeling was not nearly half of the terror that Diana must have been feeling, because I've never seen a woman struggling harder against her inner fears as I saw in my doorway that evening. I took her in my arms in that doorway, forgetting to shut it for about five minutes, just holding her and trying to let my love enter her heart through my embrace, hoping to send her fears running just has she had for me in her mother's living room the week before.

I guessed the name of that fear gnawing at her stomach: Little Miss Perfect.

I kissed her hard, trying to suck that poison out of her bloodstream through her lips.

"Uh, maybe we ought to shut the door?" she joked timidly, trying to relieve her building stress.

"Guess you're not into exhibitionism," I chuckled.

"Who'd want to see me...?" she started, giving voice to the fear inside of her.

"Me," I interrupted. "I want to see you. I want to see all of you. Nothing you can show me can possibly be half as bad as the ugliness I showed to you last week."

Dear Heaven, I needed a better script writer. It was supposed to be a compliment, but it came off very left-handed.

Fortunately, Diana was either very forgiving or too consumed with her own fears that she overlooked it. "Well, not with the door opened!"

I obliged and shut the door, locking it. I immediately went back to kissing her, but her worries still consumed her.

"Don't suffocate me," she joked as she broke away from my kiss. "I gotta breathe!"

I allowed her to back her head away but I did not release her from my arms. I tried to come up with some words of encouragement while she caught her breath.

"Nobody's here but us," I said, trying to allude to Diana's worry without saying Voldemort's name aloud. "No Ghosts of Lovers Past. Just a man... barely... and the Angel from Heaven that he loves. That he loves more than everything in this world. Who wants to prove that to her."

Diana looked away for a moment. "I'm not her," she admitted.

"Yes, you are," I assured her.

"I mean, I'm not Lisa," she whispered nervously.

"I know, and I don't care," I stressed gently. "It's you I want."

"But she's still here," Diana worried. "She's always going to be here. Every time."

I swallowed, admitting to myself the truth in what she was saying. I decided to not insult her with a denial, but I wanted so much to take that fear away from her. I could only think of one way to tell her.

"You don't need to be afraid of Lisa any more that I have to be afraid of Peter," I assured her.

"That's comparing apples to raisins!" she snorted, trying to let me know how little she cared for the guy who broke off his engagement with her. Twice.

"So, Peter had raisins 'down there'?" I asked, trying to lighten her mood with a joke.

"That's not what I mean, and you know it," she replied.

"Yes, I know it," I agreed. "And yes, Lisa's part of my past. But that's exactly where she's staying from now on. I'm not measuring you against her anymore. I'm measuring her against you. And I gotta tell you: she's not even close."

"Bullshit," Diana muttered. "You showed me the picture. She's gorgeous."

"On the outside? Maybe." I admitted. "Inside? She never let me in far enough to see." I then gently tightened my embrace an looked into her eyes. "You've let me in. You've hidden nothing from me. You've shown me what you think is broken and ugly, but all I see is beauty. I've shown you the ugliest a man can show inside of me, but you've accepted that."

"There's nothing ugly in there," Diana interrupted gently.

I smiled gently. "Because of you. You cleansed me of it. You reached in with your Angel powers and removed all of it last week."

"God, this is sounding like the worst of my soap opera," Diana joked.

"Sorry, best I can do without a script," I chuckled. After a breath, I continued, "She's my past. You? You're my now, and hopefully, my forever. You're my Angel, my gift from Heaven, and like everything else from Heaven, you're beautiful."

A tear rose in her right eye and her lip trembled. "Oh, that was so much better than my soap opera!" she tried to joke before kissing me. Her body was shaking in my arms, but not from anticipation. She broke the kiss and whispered nervously in my ear, "I'll do my best."

"You don't have to do anything," I whispered back. "It's not about me tonight, Angel. It's about you."

"I...," she stammered.

"What?" I asked gently.

She stammered again, no pronounceable words coming forth.

"Remember your promise," I whispered gently. "'Nothing' isn't in our vocabulary."

"Yeah, but that's all I can think to say," she confessed.

"Angel, you can tell me anything," I reassured her. "I promised you that I wasn't letting go, and I mean it."

Diana sighed and looked away. "I feel like I'm forcing you into this."

"You're forcing me to come to terms with something that I should have faced long ago," I softly corrected her. "Something I need to face and defeat if I'm ever going to marry you. And I am going to marry you someday, Angel. But I can't do that until I defeat my inner demons."

"But do we have to fight them now?" she asked. "I mean, I didn't realize... I didn't know the reasons... I thought you were..!"

My heart rejoiced when I heard her question. I chuckled at her stammering, and she fell silent.

"What's so funny?"

I smiled back. "Thanks."

"For what?" she asked blankly.

"For saying 'we'," I replied. She had already thrown herself into the fight with me, even though I would have kept her out of it. _Damn, I love this woman_!

She blinked a couple of times. "Well, it is our problem, isn't it?"

"No, it's mine," I answered. "But it's nice to know that you're asking to help me."

She gave me a nervous smile. "Yeah. I want to help. More than anything."

"And I want to prove to you that I love you," I said.

"You already have," she assured me gently. "In other ways."

"Diana, I need to prove it to you this way," I softly insisted. "You need to know. You need to be sure. You deserve to be sure. Please, let me?"

The nervous smile returned. "For the man I love? Anything!"

You know those scenes two-thirds of the way into the R-rated movie where the male and female leads finally surrender to the sexual tension? How balanced the soft lighting is? How seductively they undress for each other? How perfect the foreplay is? How the background music crescendos at just the proper time? Sure, but they get about a dozen takes to get that right, cutting the best of each take in the Editing Room and splicing them together to get the perfect sequence.

We had one take. It was flawed. But it was no less perfect.

Yes, I made some mistakes and miscalculations. So did Diana. I'd like to cut out the part where I tripped over my pants and fell into the bed, or the part where I tried to help Diana move to make us both more comfortable and instead banged her head into the headboard so hard that it brought her to tears for ten seconds. She would have liked the chance to rewind her life back an hour or so and pick out the comfortable bra instead of the lacy one with the bent clasp that almost required a hunting knife to rip off, or take back the part where she scratched me with her nails in the one part of the male anatomy that isn't strong enough to take that torture.

It was as perfect as two imperfect people could make it. Once the clothes came off, I could not understand what we feared. She was indeed beautiful. True, she was no runway model, but that was not a flaw. Her body was perfectly proportioned, and Davie Junior wasn't shy about showing his admiration. True to my word, I kept it all about her for the evening, bringing her to three climaxes without the help of the appendage between my legs. The appendage in my mouth was getting a little sore, as well as my nose from her pelvis bucking against it...

After the third one hit, she started protesting through large gasps for breath. "Stop!"

"Why?"

Her body convulsed uncontrollably for another ten seconds before she went limp. As she panted on her back, she gasped, "because... I've done... nothing for you..."

I smiled, sliding myself up alongside her and looking into her face. Diana looked back at me, and I finally saw what I had wished to see in a woman's face for years: contentment. I drank in that look on her face, the look that Donna never showed me and that Lisa had been unable to show me.

"You've done everything for me," I corrected her gently. It was no idle pillow talk. It was the honest truth. At long last, "nothing" was gone. Finally, the monster was slain.

She looked lovingly at me for a second and inhaled gently. Quickly, the loving look soured.

I put my hand over my mouth, guessing at what caused that reaction. "Fish breath?" I muttered ashamedly.

"Sorry?" Diana winced. "I know it's mine, but...?"

Chuckling, I jumped from the bed and trotted to the bathroom, where I tried to set a Guinness World Record for Hands And Face Washing And Mouthwash Gargle. I hurried back to the bedroom, this time avoiding my pants on the floor which tripped me up last time. I slipped into the bed, wrapped my arms around her and kissed her.

"Better?" I asked.

"Much," she cooed.

I then felt her hand groping for Davie Junior.

"Angel..." I started.

"It's not fair for this to be all about me," she said.

It was then that I realized that I should have planned for one obvious contingency, but that I hadn't.

"Next time, Angel," I said, trying to dissuade her.

"But I've done nothing for you," she replied.

"You've done more for me than you can possibly know," I assured her. She had done what I could not do for years. She defeated "nothing."

"Honeybunny," she said, using for the first time a nickname she'd often use for me in the future, "I've got to prove something. To me. Please?"

I grimaced. "Angel, I'm not prepared for this..."

She tugged on Davie Junior, who was reporting to both her and me that he was Ready For Duty. "Doesn't seem that way to me," she smiled.

"I mean, I don't have any condoms in the place!" I ashamedly admitted. I had been so worried about making her happy that I had not planned at all for satisfying my own urges.

She glowered at me. "You're kidding?! You mean you're the only man in the Universe who doesn't carry a damned rubber in his wallet?!"

 _Aaaaaaand... the moment's gone._

I shrugged. "Haven't had the chance to use one in a long time...!"

"You must have had some back in your old apartment," she pressed. "You could have packed them up and brought them here!"

"They expired!" I claimed. "I'm telling you, it's been a real damned long dry spell for me!"

"What about Paula?" she asked.

"I was telling the truth," I explained. "It was dinner-only with Paula, no matter how hard I tried. I can't even tell you the scent of her mouthwash, because I never got close enough to find out. Whatever she told you ladies down in the Accounting office was a damned lie."

"Not all of it," Diana smiled. "You are the Cute Guy From Drafting."

"Glad you think so," I smiled.

She started tugging on Davie Junior again, whose stature had slumped a little from the scolding I got for forgetting the Boy Scout Motto. Smiling, Diana whispered, "well, there's more than one way to please the little guy..."

I groaned.

"What?" she asked curtly.

I sighed. "Angel, a word of advice? Never use the words 'little' or 'small' when holding your boyfriend's dick in your hand? It's a real mood killer."

Diana blushed. "Sorry," she whispered before giving me a kiss. She then slid down the bed along my side.

"Uh, what're you doing?" I asked.

"You'll see," she winked.

It was then that I discovered that my Angel had some skills that were learned a few steps short of Heaven.


	9. Chapter 9 - Facing Vader Again

Compared to those two events, my proposal five months later was a cakewalk.

I knew that Diana would accept, because she had been asking me once a week for about six straight weeks, "when are you going to ask me to marry you?" I was giving it enough time to make sure she was not just trying to move out of the house to get away from her sister after an argument. Diana had truly become The One that I was willing to risk either Happily Ever After or Divorce For Dummies. I was all-in on Happily Ever After.

This was not Diana's first rodeo, as if engagements were anything akin to rodeos. Diana had been engaged to Peter twice; the fool had backed out each time. Because of that, Diana had some dress rehearsal experience with all the mechanics of lining up a traditional wedding: planners, invitations, photographers, churches, clergy, receptions, and a whole bunch of other stuff that men never discover until they are sucked into the Wedding Industry Vortex and drowned. Diana was making use of my somewhat limited artistic talents to save hundreds of dollars more than I thought anyone could reasonably charge to address the wedding invitations. No one would have paid me for the calligraphy work that I turning out if I was trying to do this for a living, but it was better than most Do It Yourself jobs, or at least so Diana thought.

Despite being engaged, we were not living together. We came the mutual agreement not to move in together until after the wedding for several reasons. The first was that my lease specifically said that there was only to be one occupant in the apartment, and I didn't want to be both kicked out and be paying an early lease termination fee. The second was that Diana's family definitely tilted the boat to the conservative side, thinking that the Cleavers were still the prototype for all families to aspire. The third was that Diana had been this far before and it had all fallen apart on her. Although I had no intention of Pulling A Peter on her - no, I don't mean that in the Beavis and Butthead way - I respected her worries and didn't push. Besides, we were spending most evenings at my place anyway until about 10:00, going over wedding plans and occasionally... doing other things... with me prepared for them this time.

We were at my apartment one evening, doing more wedding preparation work. It was That Time Of The Month in Dianaland, so it was going to be an evening of work, with maybe some petting later if her mood allowed it. We had some recently completed envelopes arranged around the room on furniture and shelves for the ink to dry. I was completing an envelope on the average of one every five minutes, if you didn't count the occasional mistake that resulted in its shredding and starting over. Diana was going through some other checklist and making notes when we were interrupted by the ringing of her cellphone. Grumbling "hang on" under her breath, Diana fished the noisy device out of her purse.

"Hello?" Diana said politely into the cellphone. I then noticed her stiffening upright in my peripheral vision.

"Oh! Hi! I'm so happy to finally talk to you!" She then looked about urgently and started speaking breathlessly into the phone at machine-gun pace. "Can you hang on just one second don't hang up please it will only take a second?"

I gave her a questioning look.

Diana cupped her hand over the cellphone microphone. "Honeybunny, I really gotta take this call in private," she whispered.

I shrugged and went back to my amateurish calligraphy work. "Not a problem."

Private meant the bedroom with the door shut, which was fine with me. I could turn out a few more invitation envelopes while she handled the call. It was not until I handled my fifth one that I began to wonder if Diana had fallen through a trap door that I had not yet discovered in my own bedroom.

"Diana?" I called out.

Two heartbeats passed before she opened the bedroom door and stuck her head out to look at me.

"You okay?" I asked.

She smiled, nodded, retreated behind the door and closed it again.

I completed another three envelopes before she emerged with a small note. She handed it to me.

"Mrs. A. Carter?" I asked, reading it.

"Someone I'm inviting," Diana replied casually.

I didn't recognize the name from the list of relatives that Diana had shown me, and I didn't know anyone with that last name. "Friend of yours?"

"New one," she answered. "Didn't have the address before now."

"Anyone I know?" I asked, wondering if this person worked down in Accounting or in Support Services with her.

Diana shrugged.

I looked at the note again and squinted to clarify my vision. It didn't work. "Angel, you're really going to have to get better at training me to read this chicken scratch. Is that an eight or a six?"

She squinted along with me at the Bronze Age Cuneiform. "It's a zero."

I grunted. "I'm keeping the checkbook."

"Like hell you are," she replied. "I'm going to know where every cent goes!"

"I'm not your father," I reminded her.

"Thank Heaven," she sighed in relief.

"Let's just hope the IRS can read your handwriting better than I can," I joked.

She looked at me, admonishment in her face and playfulness in her eyes. "Oh, no, you're doing the taxes, Mister Math Wiz."

I tried to give her a Clint Eastwood squint. "And who decided this?"

"Fine print in the marriage license" she joked. "You should have read it more closely."

"Wonder what else is there?" I muttered.

Diana gave a wide smile. "Oh, it's going to be so much fun showing you!"

Everyone would love to say that their wedding ceremony went off without a hitch. No one's does. Ours was no different, but we were able to overcome the last-minute obstacles. Her friends and family on the left side of the church were triple the count of mine and threatened to capsize the building their way. She had a bigger family and more friends that lived closer to the city. I grew up in the next state over, and the only thing most of my friends and family heard about the city was its crime rate, its political corruption, its awful traffic, and its lousy sports teams; most chose to stay away and send a gift in their stead. But even if her side outnumbered mine, my side could take hers in a fair fight.

Diana didn't back out at the last minute. Looking lovingly into my eyes, she answered," I will," after the minister asked, "Diana, will you take this idiot...?"

Guess there's a sucker born every minute. If a year wasn't long enough for her to realize that she was in love with a fool, she was never going to learn.

Some applause, tossed confetti, and numerous poses for photographs later, we were the center of attention at our wedding reception. Diana and I were being put through the ritual embarrassments: the toasts; the dances; the speeches; yada; blah; et cetera.

I was barely paying attention to anyone else besides Diana and the wedding planner when suddenly I felt a tremendous Disturbance in the Force that shifted the floor underneath me.

At first, I thought it was simply the twitching corpse of my bachelorhood still in its death throes. I was hoping that it was the monster finally dying after a decades-long siege. But my SpideySense continued to shriek out in my brain. It was a couple of minutes more before I realized that it rang out the strongest when I looked towards a certain area of the room.

Then I saw it.

I noticed the gait first. Some people have a way of walking that you cannot imitate. I could always pick my best friend growing up out of all the players on the football field because of the way his shoulders rocked from side to side as he trotted from the sideline into the huddle, even if someone was behind him and blocking his jersey number from view. The same recognition software in my brain was kicking in now and raising a Red Alert.

Two people on the far side of the room were walking abreast, heading from their table to the lobby. The shorter one, wearing a floor-length creme gown, was closer to me and blocking part of the taller one from view.

I knew that stride anywhere. I had it memorized.

My peripheral vision faded to black. My heart stopped beating and my lungs forgot how to breathe.

 _Hadn't I paid enough penance? Could the Universe be this cruel?! Must I face Darth Vader again? Now?!_

The hair was longer, the body had an extra pound or two on it, but as sure as I was standing there, it was her, heading to the lobby in the company of a brunette.

Then, just as a Jedi can sense the presence of a Sith nearby, the woman turned her head towards me.

Our eyes locked.

I was no longer aware of the pop-synth-romance blather coming through the PA system or the people around me. Instead, I was transported to a dusty dirt street in a Western movie ghost town, complete with creaking saloon doors that groaned against the tumbleweed-tossing winds as an unseen Flamenco guitar played ominously in the background. Thirty paces away, standing in a haze of swirling dust was a lone figure, a wide-brimmed hat hiding its face, a torn brown poncho draped over its shoulders and fluttering in the wind, a pistol hanging from its right hip, its right hand dangerously close to the butt of the pistol and reaching nearer, its legs spread shoulder distance apart. Slowly, the figure raised its head, first exposing the unlit cigar clenched in teeth behind ruby-red lips, then a flutter of scarlet hair in the breeze, and finally blue-green irises glaring out from squinted eyelids, locking with mine.

Cue the Ennio Morricone soundtrack: _Ayieayieah! Whaaaah whaaaah whaaaah_...!

The gunslinger's jaw clenched. Her body twitched. A single clap of thunder roared. Something slammed into my chest with battering ram force. My heart stopped.

I blinked.

Then I wondered who constructed this reception hall from the ghost town in the fraction of an instant that it took for my eyelids to reopen.

I felt a gentle nudge, and it woke me partially from my stupor.

"Honeybunny? You okay?"

"My God," I whispered blankly, afraid that I was about to summon Voldemort by speaking his name aloud. "It's Lisa..."

Next time on Springer: Ex-girlfriend shows up at a wedding; Stupid Ass Groom forgets his wedding vows and rushes after her; Blushing Bride turns to Bloody Bride and goes on murderous rampage. Would any jury in the land convict her? Sponsored by Dewey, Fleecem and Howe: Attorneys specializing in Divorce and Personal Injury cases.

Diana reacted in the way I least expected, seeming instantly excited. "Really?! I wasn't sure they came! Where?"

"Heading out the lobby," I muttered.

"Damn," Diana cursed. "I really wanted to meet her! Go and hold her up for a second! I'll be right over?"

"Huh?" I asked, vapor-locked and confused. My One And Only actually wanted to meet The One That Got Away? Aside from seeking blackmail information, I could not imagine why. Perhaps in my wildest fantasy there was the possibility that Lisa Williams would materialize, bless my union and give me the closure I long sought. In the real world? In the wedding planner's checklist?

"You move faster than I do, even in those rented shoes!" Diana urged. "Go stop her!"

Maybe this wasn't a test. Maybe this wasn't supremely stupid, although at that moment I could not understand how it wasn't the pinnacle of Stupidity. With my mind firmly locked in confusion, my body simply reacted to Diana's orders. With just enough politeness but not any more than necessary, I excused myself through several people who tried to get my attention as I passed by the guest tables.

The two of them were halfway across the lobby and heading towards the exit with their backs facing me when I caught sight of them. Despite my attempt to sound calm, my voice seemed panicked when I heard it reverberate back to me off the lobby walls.

"Lisa! Allison! Wait up a second?"

The pair stopped and looked over their shoulder at me: Allison with a genuine curiosity as to who was interrupting; Lisa with the guilt of a felon caught in the act of the crime. Allison then leaned into Lisa and whispered something.

Lisa stiffened and muttered something back, not able to take her eyes off of me as I approached.

Allison leaned in again, and looking straight at me, mouthed three words that looked like "talk to him," through my amateur lip-reading ability. Then, in a louder voice that I could make out, she announced that she'd go outside to flag down a taxi cab.

I slowed as I came nearer, sensing in Lisa's posture the fear of a squirrel caught in the middle of a busy highway and uncertain of which way to dart. She turned as slowly to face me as a schoolgirl would if she were about to receive a scolding from a school principal.

My voice betrayed my trepidation. I'm sure my face did as well, but there was no mirror handy to confirm that.

"Leaving so soon?" I tried to ask gently.

Lisa flashed that nervous, lower-lip-biting smile of hers.

My Kryptonite. Or, at least it used to be. It still made me weak to see it, but not nearly as much as it used to. Strangely, the sight of it eased my anxiety. There was no vindictiveness, no hatred, no envy, no bitterness in that smile or in the eyes above them that were searching for anything other than my face on which to focus. She was simply nervous.

In an instant, my archive of Lisa Williams material loaded in from backing storage into real memory, and I quickly understood the meaning of the facial expressions, the eye movements, and the body language. More than simple nervousness was there. She was scared. Perhaps her Jedi Master was forcing her into that one last confrontation with her own personal Darth Vader, and Lisa was probably more afraid than I was. I did not want my possible last sight of Lisa to be etched into my memory forever as a portrait of fear. I decided to be a gentleman and offer her a polite excuse to leave.

"I know," I said. "Bit of a dull party, huh? Boring: just like me. But you already knew that."

Lisa risked a look up into my eyes. "Not boring. Simple."

"Yeah, I guess," I agreed clumsily, trying not to break out into an idiot grin. She still had a power over me, even if it was now somewhat diminished.

"You always preferred things simple," Lisa continued. "You were that guy who had to scrape all the stuff off his hamburger because you only wanted meat and a bun, nothing else."

"Still am. I know, you always found that kind of embarrassing," I offered lamely.

"But honest," she added.

I didn't want to look around for Diana because I didn't want Lisa to take such a gesture as an excuse to leave, but I also could not sense Diana's presence nearby. I also did not hear any hurried clacking of bride heels. I needed to stall for a little more time. I chose the obvious way, gazing at her in that tastefully subdued yet flattering creme gown, one worn by someone who wanted to appear attractive in a formal setting yet not deflect any attention away from the bride.

"You look amazing in that gown," I smiled.

Lisa blushed. "Says James Bond in the tux."

I chuckled. "I turn into a pumpkin at 7:30. That's when the rental company strips me naked to get the suit back."

"Not exactly a scene I'd want to remember for my wedding day," she tried to joke.

I could see it behind her eyes, in the furrows of her brow, in the tooth marks she was leaving in her lower lip. There was a war waging behind all that, a battle between something struggling to burst out and the police barrier erected to keep it within. It pained me to watch that struggle. I cared a little less now in stalling for Diana to arrive, and a little more about the predicament that Lisa must be enduring. I still cared for Lisa too damned much to watch her squirm like this. I decided to make the sacrifice for the both of us and be the goat.

"Look... Lisa, I..." I began, dropping my eyes to the floor in a search for my invisible inspiration.

"Don't do it, David," Lisa interrupted immediately, obviously sensing the serious turn of tone in my voice.

I could imagine her being afraid that I would turn this into an embarrassing spectacle custom tailored for a soap opera. I thought she expected me to start demanding answers, or to accuse her of lying, or for me to channel my inner Ross Chandler and start professing my undying love for her on my own wedding day. My motive was far simpler, and I tried to explain it despite her polite protest.

"Lisa, I was only going to..."

"You were going to say that it was all your fault, because that's exactly what you think I want to hear," she said ashamedly.

She guessed it in one shot.

Her agony was still there, played out in her face. I still cared about this woman, even though I had pledged myself to another woman only two hours earlier. I was not going to let her bear the burden that was mine. Not because I wanted the role of sacrificial lamb, but because I didn't want her bearing the guilt in her own heart. Lisa was finally whole and I didn't want the weight of the blame for our relationship to poison her life now that she had found happiness for herself. I'd been dealing with it for years; I could learn to live with it. She didn't need to.

"Because it was my fault," I offered.

Lisa sighed and closed her eyes. She used to do that when she was trying to screw up the courage, usually to ask me to do something she knew I had no interest in doing. "David, I... I should have confided in you. I should have trusted you as much as you trusted me. But it turns out that even if I had told you, I would have been wrong, and it would have been worse for both of us."

The stream of illogic utterly confused me, and I did not have a Vulcan handy to help me navigate it. By telling me the truth, she would have lied?

"Why?" I stammered. "Because... because of your orientation?"

"No," she said, her eyes now open but unable to look at me. "I would have sworn in a court of law that I was straight. I also would have sworn that, if I had told you what you wanted me to tell you, it would have been the truth. But it would have been a lie, one I made to protect myself from my mistakes. Worse yet, I would not have known I was lying to you, and I'd blame you more."

I was no less confused, but I could see this was hurting her. I wished for an explanation but not a public torture session. I couldn't bear to watch it, and I did not want our possibly final parting to be a lasting memory of more agony.

"Lisa, you don't have to explain..."

"Yes, I do," she disagreed. She then looked me in the face again, and I saw for the first time something I never saw before in her eyes: her regret.

"No, Lisa, you..." I tried.

"I had to lose Ally before I understood it," she continued, ignoring me. "It wasn't the straight or the gay or the kink..."

My head reflexively cocked into its Confused Farley expression when the word "kink" tumbled forth, but she ignored the gesture. I chose to ignore the word because I was afraid that it was the squirrel distracting me from the real target.

"I... expected too much from you and nothing from me," she confessed in a shamed voice. "I did the same thing to Ally, too. You were supposed to do everything, know everything... be omnipotent. I left all the work to you. That way, I couldn't be blamed if things went wrong: it'd be your fault. When we stumbled, it was your job to figure it out and fix it, not mine... not ours, like it should have been. And you were so good at doing most of it, I laid back and expected you to do all of it. I was... an emotional couch potato."

"And I was different?" I asked, forcing myself to speak in measured, gentle tones. "By giving up? By making you think that you couldn't trust me enough to tell me something? By leaving you to face whatever it was by yourself instead of helping you? By throwing up my hands and letting you walk away without running after you? By sitting on my ass and waiting for you to come back to me instead of going out to find you again? Does that sound like someone committed to making a relationship work?" I paused for breath and to make sure that my voice was still calm and controlled. "Sound like a selfish bastard coward to me."

"You weren't a coward," she said meekly. "You tried... I... didn't. I'm... I'm sorry. Can you... forgive me?"

My heart suddenly gained fifty pounds and began sinking past my stomach. My eyes stung.

"I forgave you the day after you left," I whispered honestly. "It's me that I can't forgive."

Regret drained from her face, being replaced with the caring look that she used to give me back before "nothing" started. She grasped my biceps with hands that showed no signs of nervousness or anger. She used to do that when she was trying to console me. My heart stopped sinking.

"You have to," she pleaded, shaking my arms to punctuate her sentence. "Not for me, and not for you. You have to do it for Diana. You're not guilty of anything, she's certainly not guilty of anything! You can't carry this regret into your marriage. You can't punish her for this, and if you don't forgive yourself, that's exactly what you'll wind up doing in the end! Trust me, I know! I did it to every guy after you, and I did it to Ally before I let go of it!"

The mention of my new bride's name momentarily worried me, because I was afraid of what she might be thinking of this emotional spectacle playing out in plain sight on her wedding day, to say nothing of her mother's possible reaction to all of this if she saw it. But amidst it all, I felt more than I heard the concern in Lisa's voice. We were no longer lovers, but we still cared for each other, in spite of the horrid mess that our relationship had become, a mess to which we both contributed. Just as Lisa still meant something to me, I still meant something to her, even though we each had someone who now stood larger in our hearts.

Something moved behind Lisa that caught my attention. Coincidentally, something behind me attracted Lisa's attention as well, and she flashed a wide smile to the whatever it was just aside of my left shoulder. I had no idea who was the lucky recipient of that smile for a few moments, because the only other person that I thought deserved it was approaching us from behind Lisa. Allison was returning.

"If you have to hear me say it...," Lisa started, her smile fading.

"No," I interrupted, trying to smile gently and doing my best to be as unselfish as possible. "I don't. I just... Thanks."

Again, Lisa glanced passed my shoulder. The smile returned. "Diana's a good woman, David."

"Yes, she is," I softly agreed. "She's more than I deserve."

"No," Lisa disagreed politely in a slightly stronger voice, now looking into my chest. "She's exactly what you deserve. She's a good woman. You're a good man..."

She then raised her eyes to look into mine. Some regret still churned in those blue-green irises, and there was still a wish inside of me to help her overcome it.

"...You always were," she added meekly. "I'm happy for both of you."

I felt a tear starting to dribble down the left side of my nose, but I resisted the urge to wipe it away. I wanted it to remain in evidence as to how much Lisa's presence and her compassion at this moment touched me. Allison was only two steps away now. Unbidden, disjoint memories started clicking into place, revealing an answer to a question that I did not know I was asking: that private phone call; that last-minute invitation with the unreadable address; the initial "A." A for Allison? Allison Carter?

"And I'm overjoyed for you, Mrs. Carter," I sniffled through a wide smile. "Both of you."

Allison smiled and interrupted our conversation while standing behind Lisa. "Aw, your old boyfriend says the sweetest things."

Another voice sounded just behind my right shoulder, and I was suddenly aware that our little group had grown to four. "Would you just give her a hug, already?" Diana scolded playfully.

Allison gave a consenting nod of her head in Lisa's direction that she could not see.

When we had been a couple, Lisa would put her arms around my neck and I would put mine under her arms and above her waist when giving a hug. It made it easier to deliver the kiss that usually followed. But my kisses now belonged to an Angel from Heaven. Instead, I encircled Lisa's shoulders with my arms, and she wrapped hers around my midsection. The compassion that radiated from her as we embraced was anything but weak. It warmed the lobby in its glow.

"Friends?" I whispered hopefully into her hair.

Lisa chuckled nervously. "Yeah, I'd like that."

My heart had finally resumed its rightful place in my chest and went back to its usual weight.

"Trust her, David," Lisa whispered in a sincere voice. "But help her. She's just as lost and scared as you are. But she'll be with you every step of the way. Not like me."

"Not like we once were," I consoled her. "We were young. We made mistakes. But we're better now. All of us."

I released Lisa reluctantly. The moment we broke the embrace, Diana was greeting Lisa with puppy-dog enthusiasm. "I am so happy that you came! I've been wanting to meet you for so long! David's told me so much about you!"

Lisa shrank in embarrassment. "Nothing good, I'm sure."

Diana answered before I could defend myself. "Well, if there was something bad, I haven't heard it!"

Lisa started complementing Diana on her wedding gown. I used the opportunity to turn my attention towards Allison, and I extended a hand in gentlemanly greeting. "Thanks for comi..."

Allison was having none of my gentlemanly gesture. Instead, she stepped up and embraced me in a hug. Her heels gave her a one inch height advantage over me. "Congratulations, David!"

How do you hug a woman in the presence of your new bride? I missed that session with the wedding planner, and now I was on my second attempt at it in as many minutes. I returned the hug with just enough sincerity to make it genuine but not too energetically as to make it appear that I was already exploring personal contact from other women. In other words, as clumsily as humanly possible. Allison chucked in understanding at my predicament and broke the embrace.

"Thank you, Allison," I said sincerely. "You gave me just the slap I needed at the time I needed it."

"Happy to oblige," Allison replied through a wide smile.

"Yeah, she's good at slapping..." Lisa started to joke, and then clammed up quieter than Pandora after being asked if she opened a certain Box.

"Don't tempt me, Mrs. Carter," Allison grumbled. However, I guessed from the curved smile of Allison's lips that the remark had been more of an invitation than an admonishment. There was definitely some deeper meaning in those seemingly innocent words. Allison then looked at Diana and me. "You two have a wedding reception to get back to, and we have a cab waiting for us."

I nodded.

Still the puppy-dog, Diana asked, "well, at least text me your e-mail? I'd love to chat when we have more time!"

"You're still trying to dig up my secrets, aren't you?" I joked with my new bride.

"Every last one of them, Honeybunny!" she smirked.

"You'll have my e-mail in your text messages in five minutes," Lisa replied, sensing an opportunity to have some fun at my expense.

Although I was happy at the chance for Lisa to have fun with me again, even indirectly, I groaned liked the script demanded. "If she tells you about an episode at White Castle, I'm telling you right now, that never happened, no matter what the surveillance video shows!"

The three women laughed, and I knew right then that I had never heard sweeter music in my life.

Then Lisa did it, one last time.

She flashed me that smile.

I smiled back. "That's the look I want to remember."

Allison gave us the same smile before we all made our final goodbyes for the evening.

"So, Little Miss Size Four is what I've been trying to measure up to?" Diana snarked as we watched them exit and head for a parked taxi cab outside.

Once, that had been true. Not any longer, and never again. I turned to face my new bride and I gave her the most loving smile I possessed. "She can't hold a candle to you."

Diana was still looking after them and avoiding my eyes. "She can hold thirty pounds of candles and I'd still be heavier."

"Stop insulting my wife, Diana," I said gently. "Because I love my wife more than I've loved any person on this earth. You're the one I want, now and forever."

"Good answer," she finally said with a smile and turned to face me. "You feel better now?"

"Why'd you invite them?" I asked in a nervous whisper.

"Because I love you," she said. It was a simple response, but the image of caring and love her face spoke volumes more.

"More than I deserve," I said.

"You heard your old girlfriend's answer to that," Diana smiled. "I agree with her."

"Then you're both mentally disturbed," I joked.

"You're complaining?"

I laughed. "Nope." After a beat, my curiosity could no longer be ignored. "How'd you find them?"

"Scanned your contact list," she explained. "I figured that this Lisa with no last name had to be her."

"Did that make you jealous?" I asked, a little afraid of the answer.

"At first," my wife admitted. "But not after you told me what was really eating you up inside. And deep down, I'd rather we all be friends than enemies." She then sighed. "Let's get back. We've probably got a few more embarrassments ahead of us. Conga lines, food fights, that stupid garter crap, who knows what else? If we stay out here too much longer, they'll think we eloped."

"Would that be such a bad thing?" I asked, draping my arm over her shoulder as we started to head back into the reception hall.

"No," she answered, "but we have two problems. First, the limo's not returning until 6:00. The second is that I don't want people deciding to take their gifts back!"


	10. Chapter 10 - Everything

None of the wedding gifts bore the names of Lisa or Allison, or even of a Ms. or Mrs. Carter. I learned months later that Diana had insisted they not bring one when she made the invitation. However, Lisa did bring me a gift that day that was second only to the gift that Diana had given me when she entrusted her heart and future to me: renewed friendship.

Thankfully, there was no similar opportunity for a reconciliation scene with Diana's ex. Diana invited Lisa because she understood how much I cared about Lisa and regretted how things ended, and she got a sense of the same when she talked to Lisa that night while I was scribbling out invitation envelopes. My Angel was trying to give both of us an opportunity for closure. The only closure she cared about with Peter was the nailing shut of his coffin lid.

We have only met with Lisa and Allison once since, after Diana and I emptied our bank accounts to purchase a house in the outer suburbs and invited friends over to the housewarming. It was a warm and fun reunion, but I could sense that they felt alone in a small crowd of our family and my geek friends. We might have chances to meet up again, but we don't move in the same circles anymore and we are not the same people we were seven years ago. That is not a bad thing. People evolve; they don't necessarily change entirely, but they grow enough that tastes and experiences change. That change does not weaken a friendship, even if it makes it somewhat less present.

We trade the occasional e-mail with each other, and send anniversary, birthday and holiday cards. Allison has e-mailed me a couple of times for gift ideas for her wife and I tried to help, but being a few years removed from doing that for Lisa, my ideas are a little out-dated. Diana now keeps entries for both Allison and Lisa in her cellphone, and jokingly threatens to use them to get dirt on my past when I start being a nuisance. Yes, I still have Lisa's number in mine, but now when I look at it, I remember that smile in the reception hall lobby, not the Medusa glare that she flashed when we ended our relationship.

Lisa tried to deflect my e-mailed inquiries into her writing career, claiming that she had not "found the right words yet." I knew how important it was for authors to write something - anything - on a daily basis if they wanted to make a career of it, because Lisa had harped on that while we were a couple. I was certain she was publishing something, even if it was fan fiction on the Internet, anonymous advice in trashy women's magazines, or advertising on cereal boxes. I wanted to support her in her art, so I kept pestering her as best as one can pester someone through e-mail and not be routed automatically to the Spam folder. After about a year's worth of e-mails, she finally divulged the location of her Internet fiction archive.

Eye-opening does not begin to describe it.

Of course, I read it. I am a man and therefore a pig, and Lisa's stories appealed to the perverted pig DNA in my cellular structure. I more than read; I binged. Diana didn't read any further than the first paragraph of the first story; she still leans to the conservative side of the middle of the road, so erotica tends to repulse her more than it entices her, which is okay. To each their own...

Lisa painted scenes with words, even if they were scenes that I could not possibly imagine occurring anywhere outside of very bad Internet video releases from the Czech Republic. It was all too easy to imagine Lisa in the scenes she crafted out of those words, because even the blissful love of my wife cannot cause me to forget the sight of that redhead's body naked. That memory made it all that much harder to pull my attention away from her stories. It was also hard...

Whoops, I started devolving into Beavis and Butthead territory there... cough... okay, moving on...

Even if eighty percent of the work was the product of an overactive imagination, the amount of research necessary to deliver these detailed, absorbing, convincing stories could only be done by someone enthralled with the subject. She also hardly hid the players in the drama, keeping Allison's name and changing hers into a mockery of that derisive nickname her brothers had for her. Allison, the domme; Lizbeth, the sub...

Thankfully, none of the losers in her stories were named Dave. Somehow, I think that if a Dave suddenly showed up in her fiction now, he'd be boringly normal... except for a guilt complex the size of the Pentagon Building that he carried around inside of him.

I found Lisa's fiction enlightening and far more than wack-off porn. It delved into the mysteries and the truths about a subculture instead of going for the cheap thrill that was easily achieved by perpetuating its stereotypes. It was not a story focused on the subculture itself, but a story of people in love who happen to enjoy the subculture. I have to admit that the sex was the initial hook into the stories for me, but in the end I was skipping over the sex scenes to find where the personal drama resumed. I needed to know what happened to these people, whether they shattered the stereotypes and conquered their demons. Judging from _My Jealousy_ , _My Appreciation_ , and _My Ally_ , it worked out, but not before going through a ton of heartache before truths were revealed. Reading the impassioned writing in those pieces, I am guessing that there was a great deal of real life influencing those three stories, including the heartache of lost love and the triumph of love restored.

Just like my life. Go figure.

After reading, it became obvious what the "nothing" was that came between us, even to a dunce like me. Lizbeth, the avatar for Lisa; Lizbeth, the submissive. Seeing that distant stare in her eyes those nights was painful enough for me, but it was probably a fraction of the agony that the "nothing" wrecked in Lisa's heart when we were together . Of course she was scared of it, with the shame that mainstream society heaped upon people with those desires. Of course she was scared of what I - a simple, mainstream-type of guy - would think of her if she confided in me. Who wouldn't be? Even without a minor in Mathematics, you can see that the likely sum of those two operands is disaster. So Lisa did what any uncertain and afraid person would do: she hid it.

I now understand her fear, if only a tiny portion of it. Even so, I wish now more than ever that Lisa had confided in me. I could have softened the impact, ending our relationship in a fender-bender instead of a ten-car pile-up.

You see, I held a secret as well. It is a secret that I have never shared with anyone except Diana, because it is not my secret to reveal but one that I was entrusted to keep.

Give me a moment for me to figure out how to explain this...

Perhaps I could be a reasonable submissive. Guilt is essential for a submissive, and given how I elevated guilt to an art-form after our breakup, I'm real good at it.

However, I cannot dominate. Not because I think BDSM is perverted; I am a man and therefore a pig and a pervert by definition. No, I cannot dominate because I know someone who was abused. Someone I have loved all my life was abused by someone in whom they should have been able to place complete trust, someone who hid their evil from society but not from immediate family, and the family was too shamed by society to admit it and stop it.

If Lisa had confided this secret desire to me back when we were a couple, if she begged me to help her satisfy that urge, I could only fail her. Oh, I would have tried, because I was falling in love with her and wanted to please her. I would have failed. Every act that would have put Lisa more at my mercy - even something so simple as tying her wrists to a bedpost with a scarf - would have only reminded me of that evil perpetrated on that person I love. Instead of satisfying her needs, I would have gravitated towards one of two extremes: I would be so overcome with disgust and shame at that old evil that I would be unable to dominate and satisfy her; or we both would have discovered to my horror that the evil was hereditary and that it was not bound to the limits of the safeword.

Even if I had managed to pull it off convincingly? The memory of that past evil would have turned my heart to stone. I'd still lose her. Even if I managed to avoid that? Lisa was going to eventually discover her true orientation, because I'm reasonable sure that she experienced a sexual epiphany and was not "changed" by something beyond her control. Lisa would eventually have to choose between living out a lie or destroying a relationship.

But perhaps it was always meant to be this way? No matter what, Lisa and I were going to end. Yes, I wound up losing Lisa's love because of the "nothing," but I did not lose her friendship or her caring. I almost lost her entirely, if not for a moment of utter desperation and the kindness of a wonderful young woman named Allison. At least we ended in a way where we could piece together a friendship out of the fragments. It turns out that everything worked out for the best, exactly as it should have.

I just wish it didn't have to hurt so damned much for so damned long in the process, but perhaps it had to emotionally hurt like Hell first so that both Lisa and I could fully appreciate the ecstasy of Heaven.

Diana insists that I have to tell Lisa all of this, so that Lisa can heal completely from that old lingering wound. As usual, Diana's right, but I'm not sure that's the wisest thing to do. Would telling Lisa all of this close the wound, or reopen it? She's happy now, she's found contentment, and so have I. Why poke at the old wound?

Perhaps Lisa's birthday in December will give me the perfect excuse to call and talk to her about it. Provided, of course, Lisa's not "tied up" with Allison at the time. Also, provided that I've made up my mind before then.

I still think about Lisa occasionally, what was and what might have been, but the memory is no longer bitter. Yes, sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have helped her explore that part of her sexuality, especially when I compare our married, vanilla sex life to the one Lisa and I shared, or to the excitement and thrill Lisa's fiction portrays. But thanks to Lisa, I met Allison. Thanks to Allison, I found Diana. In Diana, I found an Angel from Heaven that loves me for the man I am, faults and all. I love Diana like the gift from Heaven that she is, and I work to be worthy of it.

That is far more than nothing. It is more than I could ever ask.

It is Everything.

 ** _Fin_**


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